LIFE ADVICE FROM A COACH:
LAURIE SCHILLER
HEAD COACH OF NU FENCING TEAM
I NT E RVIE W BY ANDY BROW N
PHOT O BY T HOMAS MOLASH
“Be the best you can be and don’t be a phony. I think whatever job you’re looking for,
employers tend to see through phonies pretty fast, so be yourself. Don’t forget the
lessons you learned in sport and competition, because competition is what life’s all
about. You keep score. It’s life. Be true to yourself, and if you’re comfortable with who
you are and what you’re doing, then that’s what counts. Be who you are. Don’t try to
be what somebody else wants you to be, because it ain’t going to work.”
Coach Laurie Schiller grew up on Long Island and attended Rutgers University, where he
fenced and received his bachelor’s degree in African and Afro-American studies in 1972.
He came to Northwestern and received a doctorate in African history in 1982. Schiller
aspired to be an African history professor, but while he waited for a job offer in that field,
he began coaching the NU fencing team and never left. Now in his 37th season. Schiller
is widely considered one of the most successful coaches in college history and is one of
only two fencing coaches to ever reach 1,000 wins.
winter 2015 | 3

PREGAME

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
BY M A D D I E C O E

PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

FAKE DIRECTOR AND
REAL-LIFE WOODWORKER
NICK OFFERMAN TELLS JOKES
Nick Offerman, known for his role as Ron
Swanson on NBC’s Parks and Recreation,
performed a stand-up comedy set for students
on Feb. 7 at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.

6

49%
Admitted Early Decision
2015

In mid-December, 1,011 students, or 49 percent
of the Class of 2019, were admitted Early
Decision. This is the largest number of students
accepted early in Northwestern history.

473

LOGO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Chicago-Main Newsstand in Evanston
sold six of the first 300 copies of Charlie Hebdo
released for sale in the United States. After
the Jan. 7 massacre at the magazine’s Paris
headquarters, the Jan. 14 issue has been in high
demand across the globe.

2019

NEW SISTERS

Recruitment Counselors from all 12 sororities
guided hundreds of women through Panhellenic
Recruitment, with registration numbers up by
about 100. In total, 473 potential new members
received bids from a chapter this year, an
increase from 445 last year.

100 MILLION DOLLAR BILLS LAID END TO END

WHERE GPS SATELLITES LIVE,

TO MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.

PH OTO S

FR O M W
IK IM ED
IA

CO M M O

NS

OR STRETCH FROM CHICAGO

Northwestern alumna Roberta Buffett Elliott donated more than $100 million to the University
in January to create the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Studies, which will emphasize a
multidisciplinary approach to international issues.

4 | northbynorthwestern.com

PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

WOULD REACH MEDIUM EARTH ORBIT,

BLOCK PRESENTS
THE T*PL*SS CELLIST
The Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art
received a $100,000 grant from the Andy
Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for an
exhibition focusing on American cellist and
artist Charlotte Moorman. Otherwise known
as the “Topless Cellist,” she epitomized avantgarde in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The exhibition is set
to open in January 2016.

Students work at the Klein Lab, a Weinberg neurobiology research facility. Many find that their expectations for lab work don’t match up to reality.

LABORIOUS RATS

Photo by Ryan Alva

Undergraduate lab work can be a mixed bag of menial tasks and enriching opportunities.
B Y AN N I E B O N I FACE
TRANSPORTING BOXES full of
rat brains is not what Weinberg
freshman
Ashleigh
MacLean
imagined when she emailed
the manager of the Klein Lab, a
neurobiology research facility
on campus. After seeing a flyer
advertising the position, she
thought of the valuable experience
and connections she could obtain
from working in the laboratory.
She was right. According to
The Mentor, an academic advising
journal,
“research
experience
allows undergraduate students to
better understand published works,
learn to balance collaborative and
individual work, determine an
area of interest and jumpstart their
careers as researchers.”
The
entry-level
positions,
however, are often unglamorous.
The lab coat-clad students pictured
in brochures might measure out
colorful chemical solutions and
pensively collect data, but
the
actual job isn’t as picturesque.
MacLean gets to clean their test
tubes and beakers.

“There are so many dishes that
I don’t ever finish,” MacLean says.
“They’re just always there.”
Although
MacLean
wears
gloves while working, her clothes
remain an easy target for the
constant spray of water from the
faucet. She says one of the hardest
parts of the job is staying dry. By
listening to music, she pushes
through the stacks of glassware
while keeping her good humor.
In addition to dish duty,
MacLean mops the floor every
other week and helps organize the
refrigerators, which she describes
as “negative 80 degrees Celsius.”
While the work may sometimes
seem unpleasant, MacLean says
her experience has been positive.
“I like the people in the lab
even if I’m not directly working
with them,” she says of the lab’s
directors and other student
workers. “They let me look in the
microscope and chat with me.”
MacLean justifies her time at
the Klein Lab because she believes
it will serve as a stepping stone to

more sophisticated and advanced
research positions.
Kirsten Viola, Klein Lab
research lab manager, has worked
with MacLean and encourages
others to work in lab settings.
“The students are essential
parts of the lab just like everyone
else,” Viola says. “They keep the
lab clean so we can do research, but
most end up helping with projects
or even creating their own.”
Despite the mundane jobs
working in a lab may entail, the
endgame of research may far
outweigh any undesirable tasks
along the way.
“The neatest thing for me
and for students is seeing your
name in print and knowing
something you’ve done is making
a difference,” Viola says. “In
our case, it is knowing that we
are working towards treating
Alzheimer’s disease.”
The eradication of illnesses
and progression of life-saving
technology are worth washing
dishes for.

LORD
OF THE
RINK
A former competitive
figure skater takes his
talents to the Norris
Center ice rink.

THE NORRIS CENTER ice rink isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t
exactly Olympic-caliber, but it does the
trick for School of Professional Studies
student Amar Mehta. As a former
competitive figure skater, he frequents
the rink as often as he can, forgoing
rental skates for his own pair.
Starting at age 7, Mehta trained and
conditioned for about five hours per
day, receiving coaching from greats like
Scott Hamilton and Michael Weiss. He
was on track to compete at the Winter
Olympics, but stress fractures in his
knee and back ended his competitive
career at age 19.
A graduate of Northwesternâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Class
of 2014, Mehta is now taking biology
classes and enjoying the ice rink before
warmer temperatures and medical
school applications arrive this spring.

6 | northbynorthwestern.com

Photos by Jeremy Gaines

B Y N ATA LI E E SCO BA R

winter 2015 | 7

PREGAME

FOSTER WALKERS

Caring students show their puppy love. BY CE LE NA CHONG

Photo by RAE PENNINGTON
WHEN
NORTHWESTERN
alumna Ali Weinstein found herself
with free time the Spring Quarter
of her senior year, she decided to
foster a dog.
Foster owners can provide
temporary care for pets that are
transitioning
between
being
in shelters and being adopted.
Weinstein and her foster dog,
Brownie, met in April 2014. She
calls the six weeks Brownie spent
in her home one of the most
wonderful experiences she’s had.
“The two things I was used to
growing up with were children
and dogs,” Weinstein says. “You
can’t foster babies [in college] but
you can foster dogs.”
Weinstein and her roommate
found
5-year-old
Brownie
through Pets Are Worth Saving
(PAWS), Chicago’s largest nokill organization for homeless
pets. Sometimes foster pets have
behavioral issues, but Weinstein
says she got lucky with her Chow
Chow and German Shepherd mix.

8 | northbynorthwestern.com

“I constantly brought her over
to my friends’ houses,” Weinstein
says. “She is one of the sweetest,
most people-loving dogs I’ve ever
met in my life.”
Alumnus Benison Choi also
uses the word “lucky” to describe
his experience with an American
Shorthair named Cubby. After
Choi decided to foster the 5-yearold cat his senior year, he realized
it was like “having another person
in the house when [his] roommate
was gone.”
“When [my roommate was]
not there, the cat that I could play
with and cuddle with was always
there,” Choi says. “There are no
words for the joy that it brought.”
According to Angela Love,
head coordinator of dog fostering
at the Evanston-based Community
Animal Rescue Effort (CARE), cat
fostering is popular with students
because roommates can share the
responsibility while experiencing
a pet-and-owner relationship like
the ones they have at home.

“There is a lot of stress involved
with schools like Northwestern,
I would imagine,” Love says. “It
would be very therapeutic to come
back to your room and have a kitty
rubbing against your leg.”
PAWS and CARE provide
all medical supplies and tools
necessary. Yes, fostering is free.
“This is why student fostering
is popular,” Love says. “It’s for
someone who wants a pet but is not
ready to make a full commitment
and cannot commit financially
right now. In turn, we’re asking for
you to give some time and care to
your animal.”
The process of fostering a dog or
cat from CARE is simple. Interested
owners just fill out an application
and wait for an appointment call.
Afterwards, CARE volunteers
bring them the animal and medical
supplies. CARE marketing and
publicity volunteer Karey Uhler
describes the match-up process
as “eHarmony for pets.” The
organization tries to match up

owner preferences to an available
pet while also considering both
parties’ personality traits.
“Let’s say that you wanted a
fluffy lap cat,” Uhler says. “We
would look around in our database
until we find an animal that
matched the description and give
you a call.”
At the end of his fostering term,
Choi says letting go of Cubby was
hard. Because he passed down the
cat to current Weinberg seniors
Adam Hittle and Robert Smierciak,
he keeps in touch with Cubby
through frequent Snapchats.
Although
Weinstein
and
Brownie’s goodbye was equally
sad, it was a little more permanent.
She and her roommate were present
for Brownie’s official adoption
into another loving family a week
before their graduation.
“I 100 percent recommend
[fostering an animal],” Choi says.
“I would go and deliver the cat
myself to that person’s doorstep.”

GENIUS

LIVE SMARTER

Eat your
Greens

Two sophomores are making sonic waves
in the Chicago music scene.
BY MADE LE INE KE NYON
YOU’VE
PROBABLY
HEARD
OF
Streetbeat. It isn’t just the name of that party
you went to. It’s also the electronic music
radio show that broadcasts nightly from 10
p.m. to 3 a.m. on WNUR, Northwestern’s
student-run radio station, reaching about 3
million people in the Chicagoland area.

Photo by Sean Magner and Michael Nowakowski

CONTINUED
winter 2015 | 9

Two students in particular have attracted more than a few
listeners in the electronic music scene on campus and beyond.
Communication sophomores Lorenzo Gonzalez and Cameron
Smith perform as a rap duo, respectively assuming the stage
names zorenLo and Freddy Mümmix.
Their first collaborative project, an album called Melanin
Stained Lover, garnered attention on campus after its release
last winter. Gonzalez and Smith expect to complete their next
album, whose working name is Greens, this spring. The title
has multiple meanings, they say, including a reference to the
millennial generation’s version of the blues as well as to the
sensation of being high.
“We definitely found our sound,” Gonzalez says. “Melanin
Stained Lover was kind of Cam’s statement as a rapper coming
to college and my first experience with producing an album,
but now it’s like Cameron and Lorenzo making an album
together, 50-50.”
“You kind of have your own language of describing how
you want a song to sound,” Smith says. “I’ll be talking to
Lorenzo like, ‘Man, this bass should sound crunchier,’ or, ‘This

synthesizer should sound airier,’ and most people wouldn’t
understand that in the slightest, but it’s really cool that
Lorenzo always understood that.”
Both describe their sound as experimental, a term consistent
with WNUR’s mission to feature underrepresented music.
“I definitely prefer the more underground stuff, but I’m not
gonna sit here and criticize it and be a hipster because I recognize
that it is essential for EDM to be successful,” Gonzalez says,
adding that most electronic music fans, including himself,
find their love of the genre through mainstream artists. “You
have to appeal to people, and you have to show them who you
are and show them why they should listen to you. … You’re
making [your music] for other people.”
In fact, Gonzalez and Smith’s friendship was born through
a mutual love of Kanye West. After being introduced to
each other during Wildcat Welcome, the two bonded over
a conversation about the artist, who both consider to be a
musical influence.
“It was one of those first classic college nights, where we
really hit it off,” Gonzalez says, adding that the two began

their collaboration the same day. “That’s pretty much how
we became friends because, hey, we made an album together.
How could you not be best friends after that?”
Since that night, the duo has performed regularly throughout
the Chicago area and often broadcasts their original music on
Streetbeat. Communication sophomore Marc Chicoine, who
serves on Streetbeat’s executive board for media design, sees
the show’s goal of showcasing underrepresented artists like
Gonzalez and Smith as an important component of WNUR.
“It’s really cool because it gives all these different genres
of music and artists [opportunities] to get airtime when they
normally wouldn’t as often,” he says. “It’s really cool to have

such an artistically and culturally diverse group of people.”
Smith and Gonzalez both hold positions on Streetbeat’s
leadership board. Smith is Streetbeat’s apprenticeship director,
while Gonzalez serves as media director.
Their passion for Streetbeat is evident: “It’s pretty much all
I do,” Gonzalez says.
Streetbeat has also helped him succeed in the music industry
through gigs and mentors in its Chicagoland network.
“Streetbeat has done so much for me,” Gonzalez says. “I
didn’t really know going into Northwestern that there was this
huge ... community, but now looking back on it, it makes me
even more happy that I go to this school.”

10 | northbynorthwestern.com

Ph oto by S e an Magn er and Mi ch ael N owakow ski

GENIUS

BREWING
BAD

Home-brewed beer makes chemistry
class actually relevant.

P h o t o by S e a n M a g n e r a n d M ich a el Now a kow sk i

A SIDEBAR HEADLINE

BY MI R A N D A C AW LEY
WATCH
OUT,
SOLO
cups: Glass bottles may be
on the rise at Northwestern.
Communication alumnus Ted
Schwaba’s hobbies include
DJing, narrating podcasts and
keeping family traditions alive
as one of Northwestern’s few
home brewers.
Using the equipment and
brewing guide passed down
from his father and uncle,
Schwaba and his roommates,
Weinberg senior Jeff Bilik and
McCormick
senior
Harry
Poppick, recently bottled their
first batch of beer—a Belgian
stout called “Michael Jorda’s
Wine,” a name that allegedly
took “a lot of workshopping.”
Schwaba and Bilik freely admit
the science of brewing beer is not
their expertise.
“My only understanding of
the situation was that the yeast
eats the sugar and poops out
alcohol,” Schwaba says.
That’s basically true. Beer is
made when a barley solution
is boiled with hops, the female
flowers of a hops plant, to create
a wort, then fed to yeast, which
produces CO2 and alcohol. The

barley seeds are germinated and
roasted. The hops add bitterness
and flavor and sterilize the
mixture so that other bacteria
besides the yeast do not feed off
of them. This mixture consists of
broken down carbohydrates, or

sugar, creating carbonation after
the beer bottle is sealed.
Shelby Hatch, director of
chemistry labs at Northwestern,
says there are limited variations
home brewers can infuse into
their beer.

“MY ONLY UNDERSTANDING
OF THE SITUATION WAS
THAT THE YEAST EATS THE
SUGAR AND POOPS OUT
ALCOHOL.”
sugars, which are perfect food for
the tiny yeast microorganisms.
As
a
byproduct
of
metabolizing the sugar in a
low-oxygen environment, the
yeast produces ethanol and
carbon dioxide. This is why
fermentation always happens
in a closed container over the
course of two weeks. Once the
beer is fully fermented, extra
sugar is added before bottling.
The remaining yeast eats this

“Most of the different colors
and flavors come from roasting
the barley,” she says, adding that
brewers don’t often grow their
own barley. Even professional
brew companies buy different
roasts to change flavor and color.
However, home brewers
can mix hops, barley and water
to create diverse types of beer.
McCormick senior PJ Santos says
making different varieties of beer
at home isn’t too hard after some

practice. Santos started brewing
at the beginning of his junior
year and has made everything
from stouts to pumpkin beer.
“You have a whole lot of
different variables to play with,”
he says. “The end result is really
enjoyable.”
Though Santos says he
doesn’t know any other brewers
on campus, he’s “not surprised
that other people have decided
that it’s a fun thing to do.”
And with good reason:
Brewing beer is comparable
price-wise to buying it yourself,
and with home brew equipment
shop Brew Camp Evanston,
students can easily get started.
While Santos’s favorite part
of the beer brewing process is
the experimentation, Schwaba
and his roommates relish the
opportunity to share the beer
with their friends. Schwaba says
Michael Jorda’s Wine passed
his friends’ taste tests and his
father’s as well.
“My dad said that it’s better
than all but two of the beers that
they made in the ‘90s,” he says.
“And a 55-year-old dad is an
authority on beer.”
winter 2015 | 11

GENIUS

Passing the Porch
The cross country and swimming teams hand their
houses down—along with their stories.

IF WALLS COULD talk, 2147
Sherman Ave. would recount
splits and swim races. For the past
eight years, members of the varsity
men’s swimming team have
lived in this house. Although it is
passed on to the next generation
of swimmers each year, the house
maintains its original flair.
A giant TYR flag hangs in the
kitchen above piles of unwashed
dishes. A 2004-05 team meet
schedule covers the cabinets on
the second floor, as well as a poster
of King John signing the Magna
Carta that team members have
passed down since the early ‘90s.
One of the first tenants was
Alec Hayden, now the assistant
coach of women’s swimming at
the University of Illinois. In 2007,
boys occupied the top two floors
while girls lived on the first floor.
“I liked having our closest
friends together and it was nice
being able to hang out with them
all the time,” Hayden says.
Current landlord Ed Mar,
who’s managed the house since
the first year the team lived
there, has noticed a change in the
cleanliness of the house in recent
years. Mar also leases two other
properties to NU students, but he
says the swimmers are the most
responsible in managing their
own affairs.
“Neighbors are often cautious
of having students live next to
them, but the boys don’t have a lot
of late-night parties and keep the
noise down,” Mar says.
Today, only males live in the
house: eight swimmers, one nonathlete and Woodhouse the cat.
Woodhouse joined the family
last year when Weinberg junior
Jordan Wilimovsky thought it
would be fun to have a pet after
seeing an ad for a free cat on
Craigslist. The cat is now an active
Facebook user under the name
Woodhouse Meows.

12 | northbynorthwestern.com

Northwestern
swimmers
past and present have the house
ingrained into their memories,
but the tradition is starting to
slip away. This year the women’s
swimming team lost its house
lease after two years because not
enough team members wanted to
stay there. Men’s team captain Van
Donkersgoed, a SESP junior, fears
the same thing will happen to the
boys’ house.
“I’m
worried
the
upperclassmen, including myself,
haven’t instilled the value of
the house as a recruiting tool or
community place to the freshmen,”

he says. “The team is so different
than it was three years ago, there
are different personalities living
here and I worry we won’t hang
on to this place much longer.”
Several streets down at 1023
Garnett Place, the women’s cross
country team lives in a threestory house. The team moved
there three years ago and it has
remained part of the team’s ever
since. Medill sophomore Ellen
Schmitz lives on the first floor. Her
bedroom walls are lined with race
bibs from her years of running.
But there is more to the house
than cross country memorabilia.

Now part of team tradition, a
strip of wallpaper covered with
images of butlers wraps around
the kitchen. The girls also hope to
find a house-wide television show
to watch together.
“It’s nice to live with teammates
because you know they’ll never
let you miss a practice or a team
event,” Schmitz says. “You’ll never
sleep through your alarm.”

Full disclosure: Danielle Elliot is on the
women’s swimming team. Ellen Schmitz is
an NBN contributor.

Illustration by Vasiliki Valkanas

B Y DA N I E LLE E L LI OT

Where Are You Living?
B Y LU C AS M ATN EY AN D M ALLOY MOSE LE Y
AS AN UPPERCLASSMAN at Northwestern, you are entitled to some inalienable rights—freedom from shower
shoes, twin XL beds and catching colds from all the germs floating around the dorm hallways. But like all great freedoms, the battle for them is not easy. Should you decide to live off campus after your freshman year, be prepared to
fight for your right to party without interference from RAs, and don’t forget to bring some armor for those particularly
contentious roomie squabbles. At least this handy guide can solve one of your problems.

You dream of hosting
an epic Dillo Day darty

I’d rather
drink UV Blue
alone in the
shower

Pong for
days, brah!

You regularly take running
selfies at the Bahai temple

Time is a
flat circle

Punctuality
defines my life

#Guilty
#Sporty

I drive there
to take those
pics, tbh

Five minutes early
is on time
Cleanliness is next to...
Godliness

Goddamn,
the toilet’s
backed up
Does your ID scan?

Consulting is...

A way of life

???

Hell yeah, D&Ds!

Going to Chicken Shack
is always a regret

Jumbo
buffalo
wings, plz

Fuck EV1

7-Eleven pizza is the
only acceptable meal

Coffee Lab or Starbucks
No regrets
Half-caf skinny
macchiato
I have no
self-control
Diablo Dark

HOUSE
FOSTER/
SHERMAN

APT.
NOYES/
MAPLE

HOUSE
RIDGE/
NOYES

APT.
RIDGE/
CHURCH

winter 2015 | 13

GENIUS

GAME OF MOANS
Tired of hooking up in your dorm bunk bed? Your fellow students have generously
reviewed their favorite Northwestern “hot spots.” Winter came. You can, too.

B Y K E LLY
G O N S A LV E S

Ease:
Sexiness:
You have: 20 minutes
Best position: Kneeling

“It’s almost secluded while still in a public
place. We would have been able to hear
someone coming. The benches are in an
‘L,’ so at one point, we were over the two
of them. Logistically, it’s probably better
sitting up rather than trying to use both
benches.” – Sydney

Ease:
Sexiness:
You have: 30 minutes
Best position: On a piano

“We went on over to some rocks on the side. Some
have some flat surfaces that are ... conducive.
If there’s sand, it’s far below all these massive
boulders. I think we had walked past some people
who hadn’t thought of the rock idea. Being outside
is totally different – you have to remain more
clothed, but it’s worth it.” – Liam

Ease:
Sexiness:
You have: 20 minutes
Best position: Doggie style

“It’s not super comfortable, but it’s
really cool to hook up while both of you
are just looking at the skyline.” – Tyler

Illu s tr ation by Vas ili ki Valk an as

“It’s a little dusty, but it was comfortable
because there’s a piano and a piano bench.
And there was no one there after midnight
except for another person practicing
music.” – Caroline

Ease:
Sexiness:
You have: 10 minutes
Best position: Missionary

14 | northbynorthwestern.com

12:47 a.m. Everyone is so hot. Me to
everyone: “Rub your beard on my face.”
12:56 a.m. Me: “Hey do you like this song???”
*Beyonce playing*
Hot guy: “What??”
Me: “Me too! Are you going to her concert?”
Hot guy: “???”
Me: “See you there!”
If you’re not too turnt to function, you’re doing it wrong.

B Y H A R R I S O N SI M ON S
THE FIRST TIME I went to a bar, the first time I went to
the Deuce and—most importantly—the first time I went
to Boystown all happened in one night. Here are some
memories that survived the night.

7:00 p.m. It’s my friend’s birthday and she wants to go
out. I’ve never been to a bar.
10:00 p.m. Beer and wine are nasty. Skol it is.
10:01 p.m. One shot down.Vodka is so gross. Time
for shots two through five.

Illu s tr ation by Vas ili ki Valk an as

12:00 a.m. Arrive at the Deuce. It’s kind of far away.
How do people afford getting here every week? It’s
dirty and small.
12:05 a.m. Remember that boy from Wildcat
Welcome that you were really into but then you
realized you were just lonely and trying to fill a
void so you moved on and you don’t miss him but
he’s still really hot and you shouldn’t kiss him again
because why try again but you kiss him anyways? He
spends his Thursdays at the Deuce.
12:07 a.m. “Text me later.” Yeah, right, Wildcat
Welcome Boy.
12:09 a.m. My friend: “It’s gross here. Let’s go to
Boystown.”
Me: “I am literally fucked up and I am literally
wearing pajama bottoms.”
12:45 a.m. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine
such a place. There’s fog. There are lights. They’re
playing like, only REALLY GOOD MUSIC.

1:45 a.m. I am so glad straight boys are scared of gay
bars because this place is heaven on Earth and I don’t
ever want to question whether the men I’m flirting
with are imagining me naked or not.
2:23 a.m. How did I get in this Uber? Oh, good, my
friends are taking me back to campus.
2:43 a.m. What do you mean I’m hyperventilating?
2:53 a.m. *vomits*
9 a.m. Remember Wildcat Welcome Boy? His bed isn’t
as comfy as I remember it.
winter 2015 | 15

out once,” Rivero says. “But having
done it, I think I’m gonna go do
it again and actually try to do it
right.”
Zen is a unique sect of
Mahayana Buddhism that does
not focus on scriptures or rituals.
Rather than using rationality to
understand life, practitioners try
to separate themselves from logical
thought and focus on material
detachment
and
meditation.
Although there are two sectors of
Zen Buddhism, Soto and Rinzai,
the CZC uses a combined version
of the two that simplifies Zen down
to its basic principles.
“I didn’t want what I had in
the past, which was essentially
someone to hand the truth to me
in a box,” Graham says. “Nobody
tells me what to believe. There’s no
set of doctrines that I’m obliged to
accept, just support and tools.”
Buddhists
espouse
other
spiritual paths, and many in the
West see it as a philosophy that can
be practiced in conjunction with
other religions. However, Graham
says there is no hesitation to see
Buddhism as a religion in the East.
“I don’t ever know exactly what
people mean by religion when
they ask whether [Buddhism] is a

religion,” Graham says. “We don’t
really have much in the way of a
body of doctrine .... What does
that mean outside of the context of
religion?”
CZC Priest Shodin Geiman
was raised Roman Catholic
before he became interested in
Zen Buddhism. He considered
becoming a Catholic monk earlier
in life but says he felt detached
from actual religious practice when
attending church.
“You go to a church and it’s a
meeting in a pew with hundreds
of people and somebody up front.
But that’s not actually doing the
work yourself—that’s like going to
the movies,” Geiman says, adding
that he chose Zen because there is
“no bullshit .... We really cut to the
chase here.”
Although affiliated with Zen,
the CZC is more of a resource than
a church for its practitioners. It
has ceremonial events like temple
nights, but most of its services are
group meditation sittings where
people can explore life on an
individual basis.
Graham says they’re not
necessarily trying to convert
students to Buddhism, but rather
trying to give them the opportunity

to explore Zen. The people who
come to CZC are looking for
support and clarity.
Weinberg junior Jonny Schild
is
the president of NU Zen
Society. He considers himself a Zen
Buddhist and a former follower of
Vipassana, a type of insight-based
meditation. Schild has attended
Zen Society meetings since the
middle of his freshman year when
an older friend suggested it to him.
“I was experiencing a lot of
struggle,” Schild says. “I felt a
struggle to feel at home in the
world .... I guess [it was] just a
yearning to feel connected in the
world and connected with myself.”
Regardless of how beliefs and
practices differ regionally, Graham
believes Western mindfulness is
a great trend. Geiman describes
meditation as similar to athletic
training, something individuals
need to work on at their own pace,
even if it’s not something they
initially enjoy or succeed at.
“Come up and start meditating.
There’s no replacement,” Geiman
says. “It’s like learning how to ride
a bike. You’ve just got to hop on the
seat and pedal.”

Photo by Alex Furuya

THE LIGHTS DIM as 23 students
sit in a circle on small cushions
atop an orange and tan rug while
two gongs stand nearby. They
wear comfortable attire—flannels,
sweaters and jeans—and sit with
their legs folded against the floor,
focusing on the tension in their
backs. This position is the Burmese
pose, one of five positions typically
practiced at the Northwestern Zen
Society meetings.
Founded in 2003, the Zen
Society meets every Thursday
evening in the Parkes Hall Oratory
to practice Zen meditation. It is
hosted by the Chicago Zen Center
(CZC), with guidance from CZC
Director Yusan Graham. The goal
of Zen practitioners is to reach
enlightenment
by
meditating
and searching within themselves.
The students who come to the
meeting are not all practicing Zen
Buddhists. Many meditate to try
out Zen, relieve stress or achieve
other internal goals.
Medill freshman Nicolas Rivero
recently attended a Zen Society
meeting for the first time. Learning
more about how his thoughts work
intrigued him.
“I just kind of did it as a novelty,
just for the experience of trying it

BY MADISON ROSSI

16 | northbynorthwestern.com

SPOTLIGHT

Photos by JEREMY GAINES and SEAN MAGNER
Art by LUCAS MATNEY

winter 2015 | 17

SPOTLIGHT

The Device
\\\\\ Divide

From dumb phones to smartphones,
we dial in on cellular preferences.
BY M ALLOY MOSE LE Y
Your best friend, your confidant, your right hand
man, your lover if you’re a character in a Spike
Jonze movie: your cell phone. For better or worse,
mobile phones are an integral part of modern life.
The recent generation of iPhones may be popular,
but there are still some holdouts on campus who
communicate the old-fashioned way with the
2015 equivalent of a string tied to a tin can.

Hannah Reich
Weinberg freshman
iPhone 5C

Jesse Itskowitz
Communcation senior
LG Cosmos 3
“Eventually I’ll have
to upgrade for the
necessity of having the
Internet on my phone
when I’m away from
school where there’s WiFi everywhere. [Right
now] I have an iPod
Touch with Internet.”
Photos by JEREMY GAINES and SEAN MAGNER
Art by LUCAS MATNEY
18 | northbynorthwestern.com

My home is full of stories,
stories of late-night-turned-earlymorning cruises in my good buddy
Cameron Matson’s 4Runner to
towns we’d never heard of; stories
of my catfish-farming greatgrandfather marching poachers up
to the farmhouse with a shotgun
in their backs while my greatgrandmother chewed through a
whole jar of peppermints because
it made her so nervous; stories of
losing myself in the woods behind
my grandparents’ home, following
a creek fed by the Saline County
sewer system and believing termite
tracks in the oak bark were an
ancient script left by marauders
thousands of years prior.
It’s a straight, flat road from
central Arkansas, from all those
stories, to Chicago—more than 600
miles. Dad likes to say you can roll
a nickel down the highway and it’ll
get there just fine. He would know.
In the early ‘90s, he and my mother,
both native Arkansans, lived in
an apartment on North Fremont
Street only a couple blocks from
Wrigley Field. Dad worked at
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
and biked past the stadium every
night, checking the white flag
flying over the scoreboard to see
whether the Cubs won or lost that
day. And after they moved back
home to settle down and raise two
kids, we’d make Chicago trips in
the summertime, checking in on
family friends and occasionally the
Cubs, too.
When I started looking at
colleges, I liked Northwestern for a

lot of reasons. But I really liked the
thought of Chicago, where it snows
in the winters, where people take
public transportation more than
they drive and where my parents
had lived when they weren’t a
whole lot older than I am now.
For as long as I can remember,
Dad has kept a red cloth bandana in
his back pocket. A lifelong glasseswearer, he’s used it to wipe down
his lenses for more years than I’ve
been alive. But it wasn’t until after
I arrived in Evanston that I started
keeping my own. There wasn’t any
one reason I did that—more like a
bunch of little reasons. It was part
of a new style that went hand-inhand with my hobby of setting
up a hammock between willow
branches on the Lakefill. I came to
think of it as a good luck charm. I
used it to clean my glasses. It made
a great napkin, ice pack and faceshade whenever I found myself
sleeping in the sunshine. But most
importantly it was a little red
reminder of all those stories that,
collectively, I called home.
Northwestern’s an experience
in making connections, not only
those within oneself—between
home and campus, in my case
between the South and the city—
but also among one another. A big
part of college is finding fellowship
with people as they undergo that
same process of self-reconciliation,
discovering who they are today in
the context of their varied pasts.
When we look close enough, we
see the signs of that growth even
without having grown up together.

Somebody saw that happening
in me not two weeks after I settled
into Evanston. Walking through
the sorority quad, she noticed my
bandana sticking out of my pocket
and said, “Southern boy,” with a
smile. I wasn’t embarrassed. In fact,
it was even a little validating that
the spirit of home, the Arkansas
self, was still visible so far from it.
For
a
lot
of
people,
Northwestern represents a chance
to renovate their personas, to
restyle whoever they were for 18
years in favor of somebody new
and improved—who else would
know the difference? But for me
and, I imagine, for many others,
the greater challenge has come in
blending those selves, enfolding
stories of catfish farms and termite
tracks with stories of skyscrapers
and snow.
People often ask me if I’d
like to go back to Arkansas after
Northwestern. I usually say no
because I’m not sure it’d be the
same. Many of the people I grew
up with find themselves living that
same process of self-reconciliation
in places like Virginia and
Tennessee and California. These
days, Cameron’s 4Runner is parked
somewhere in Texas. And here I
am, in a suburb of Chicago, losing
myself not among oak trees and
sewer creeks but bus routes and
train stations. I’m a long way from
home, and I’m not sure when I’m
going back, but I carry the stories
with me in a little red bandana.

winter 2015 | 21

SPOTLIGHT

NU
Phone Home
See how often these campus
terrestrials call the mothership.

Possible theme song. If your
parents are stuck in the early
2000s, they may agree. Chances
are, though, you keep in contact
with your parents through other
means. In fact, 40 percent of

ALLIE BAXTER
WEINBERG SOPHOMORE

“I usually talk about what’s
happening at home, what’s happening
here with classes, friends, internships
for the summer, future, what they’re
planning on doing, if they’re planning
on visiting me and whatever they have
going on at home.”

JACK BLACKSTONE
MEDILL FRESHMAN
“I call my mom and we talk about
anything. My parents aren’t strict, so I
can be straight-up with them on all levels
except probably girls.”

22 | northbynorthwestern.com

college students report using
some form of technology to
contact their parents at least
once a day, according to a
study published in the book
Generation on a Tightrope. Though

ED ROBERGE
SESP SENIOR

“In the first few years, or rather,
in the first year, I think I was trying to
create distance between my parents
and m e . ... When you get older,
you have bigger life events to talk
about, [like] career stuff, finding an
apartment. Normally when I call them
I’ll share an update about that, but the
rest is just catching up with them.”

the phone call home is still the
go-to for longer conversations,
many students also talk to their
parents through texts, emails
and WhatsApp. Maybe Kim
should update her song.

PARTH DALAL
WEINBERG JUNIOR

“I text home to my parents every
day. It’s not a formal thing, but my
parents and I are always going back
and forth, sending funny videos, or
talking about work and school. It’s a
constant conversation.
“My mom and dad are always
more concerned about my well being
than they need to be. I’ll tell them
something—I’m not feeling well, or
I’m feeling nauseous—and they think
I’m dying. But I’m not—they’re just
a plane ride away from me. They
manage me from far away, and they’re
overcautious about stuff. My mom
will say, ‘Are you sure you’re fine?’—
‘Yeah, I’m fine, Mom.’”

EXPLORE CAMPUS

SEEKING
FAITH
Religion helps students discover
community and themselves.
BY ROSALIE CHAN
WEINBERG JUNIOR OONA
Ahn recalls trying out at least four
churches in two quarters.
Raised agnostic, Ahn says she
was looking for faith. Prior to
exploring Christianity, Ahn looked
into Buddhism.
Communication junior Naomi
Kunstler also started exploring

Photo by ALEXIS O’CONNOR

religion more at college. Religion
was never pushed on her when she
was growing up. When she came
to Northwestern, however, some
of her friends were active in Hillel.
First, she started casually going to
Shabbat. Eventually, she became
more involved.

CONTINUED

Laila Hayani, who identifies
as Muslim, tries to set time
aside everyday to read
from her English-translated
Qur’an.
winter 2015 | 23

QUAD

For Oona Ahn, praying with a rosary allows her to “become more aware of the presence of God.”
Many students stop practicing
religion once they start college. But
for others, like Ahn and Kunstler,
they explore religion and become
more invested in it.
“I think that it’s definitely
increased my sense of community
at Northwestern,” Kunstler says. “I
met so many people and formed a
lot of relationships at Hillel.”
According to the 2013 CIRP
Freshman Survey at Northwestern,
the largest religion represented
on campus was Christianity, with
43 percent of students surveyed
identifying as Christian. In
addition, 12.9 percent identified as
Jewish, 3.1 percent as Hindu, 1.4
percent as Buddhist, 1.2 percent as
Muslim and 2.9 percent with some
other religion. At 35.5 percent,
the second largest group did not
identify with any religion.
“I feel a vibe on Northwestern’s
campus
that’s
very
preprofessional,” Hillel Rabbi Aaron
Potek says. “A lot of people
approach college thinking, ‘How
can I get a job?’ It does not induce
exploration of religion. But students

24 | northbynorthwestern.com

might ask, ‘Is there something
outside of making a living?’”
As a religious studies major,
Weinberg junior Laila Hayani
believes it is important to explore
different religions. Hayani, who is
Muslim, continues to develop her
religious beliefs in college through
praying and attending the Muslim
Cultural Students Association’s
Friday prayer services.
Hayani also branches out by
learning about other religions and
participating in interfaith dialogue
through
the
Northwestern
University Interfaith Initiative.
“I always learn something
new,” Hayani says. “When you talk
to people in different religions, you
can get a deeper understanding of
the things they believe.”
SESP junior Alexandria Bobbitt
also continues to develop her
relationship with God both in her
personal life and through a student
religious group. Bobbitt is involved
in House on the Rock, the AfricanAmerican chapter of InterVarsity.
Bobbitt
identifies
as
Christian, but not with a certain

Photo by NATALIE ESCOBAR

denomination. However, she loves
the House on the Rock community
and says her faith is the governing
factor in her life.
“We’re able to come together
and ignite each other, challenge
each other and pray for each
other,” Bobbitt says. “That spiritual
component of it is so important
and unites us so much more just
because of our common hope.”
Hillel has become home for
Weinberg junior Ariella HoffmanPeterson. She was raised Jewish
and is involved in Hillel. She also
attends services and leads ZOOZ, a
Jewish service-learning group.
“I love coming to services to
connect with myself and connect
with my friends,” HoffmanPeterson says. “I really appreciate
conversations about faith, how
they struggle with that, how they
embrace it. Sometimes it’s a hard
conversation to have, but I use it as
an avenue for deeper conversations.”
Some students may not
have been raised in a religious
environment but convert when
they find a religious group on

campus they connect with.
Ahn now attends the Rite of
Christian Initiation of Adults at the
Sheil Catholic Center, which is part
of the process for people to learn
about Catholicism and convert.
“It was a long journey of church
shopping,” Ahn says. “It was here
at Sheil I felt a sense of peace,
although I could feel a sense of God
working in all the churches.”
Like Ahn, Weinberg and
Bienen sophomore Alex Ge was not
religious before college.
“I have a different impression of
Christianity than before,” Ge says.
“I saw religion sometimes caused a
lot of debates on Facebook. You just
see people arguing all the time, some
hypocrisy and stuff like that. I didn’t
reject the possibility of God, but it was
never a thing I thought about.”
But after his friends invited
him to Access, a series of sermons
at the Harvest Mission Community
Church in Evanston, he became
more involved.
“Religion made me happy,”
Ge says. “It gave me a sense of
purpose. Different people have

different things they want to fulfill
in life. Christianity is a way I can
do that.”
According to the Northwestern
Religious
Life
website,
Northwestern has 37 recognized
religious groups, including five
affiliated campus religious centers.
However, some students do not
have a group on campus for their
religion. Weinberg freshman Asha
Sawhney is Sikh. Although she
practices her religion privately and
often reads and reflects from the
Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy
book, there is currently no space or
group for Sikhism on campus.
Sawhney was disappointed
that the Wildcat Welcome Mosaic
ENU did not mention Sikhism.
“I want people at Northwestern
to know every college campus has
Sikhs,” Sawhney says. “To not even
be mentioned in the diversity ENU
was hurtful to me because of the
discrimination Sikhs have faced.”
Sawhney would like to possibly
start a Sikh group, or at least see
one form. According to University
Chaplain
Timothy
Stevens,
Northwestern
offers
various
outlets to explore religion, and
students have also formed groups
when one for their religion did
not exist.

“RELIGIOUS
PRACTICE IS
ENCOURAGED.
HOPEFULLY ...
WE CAN COME
TOGETHER AND
SHARE FAITH ...
WITH THE PURPOSE
OF UNDERSTANDING
EACH OTHER.”
“We
have
created
an
atmosphere
where
religious
questions are allowed and taken
up,” Stevens says. “Religious
practice is encouraged. Hopefully
it’s a place where we can come
together and share faith, not with
the purpose of converting each
other, but with the purpose of
understanding each other.”
According to Kevin Feeney,
chaplain and director of the Sheil
Catholic Center, students become

Even though religion was not a big part of her childhood, Kunstler says she has
become more invested in Judaism because of the Hillel Center. “In the past
year it has evolved to be a crucial part of my sense of community,” she says.

involved in religious groups on
campus in search of a community
to help them understand their
faith more.
“Religion has the potential to
be a deepening initiative,” Feeney
says. “It kind of broadens out their
experience at Northwestern, that
there’s something more that they
want to develop .... It’s the sense of
going to God together.”
Potek says that while religion
may not be necessary to connect

to God or find meaning in life,
exploring religion can provide a
sense of purpose.
“Northwestern isn’t that great
at community,” Potek says. “People
look for community because they
want to belong. Religion is the
best model for community .... If
you’re looking for an excuse not to
explore religion, you have plenty
of excuses. What if we look for an
excuse to explore? You’ll find a
way in.”
After Kunstler had coffee
with Potek, she started reading
more about Judaism and going
to Shabbat more. She also started
having conversations with her
Jewish father about their religion.
As for Ahn, she is scheduled to
be baptized this Easter Vigil if she
chooses to continue with the Rite of
Christian Initiation of Adults.
“I started to see ways where God
is working and interconnecting
in everyone’s lives,” Ahn says.
“Little coincidences make you see
this is not just my journey .... It’s
connected to a larger whole I’m
part of. I’m trying to figure out
where this is going.”

Sawhney wears a necklace with the “khanda” symbol, which incorporates two
spiritual concepts: “deg tech fateh,” the duty of Sikhs to provide food and
protection for the less fortunate and oppressed, and “miri-piri,” the belief that
worldly and spiritual power are equal.

Photos by ALEXIS O’CONNOR
winter 2015 | 25

QUAD

IN FOR THE
LONG HAUL
The logistics of commuting to NU can be tricky.
BY SH A N N O N LANE

LIVING AT HOME her first
year at college was not Weinberg
freshman Stephanie Murillo’s
first choice. Murillo commutes
at least an hour both ways from
her home in Chicago’s Galewood
neighborhood, about 15 minutes
away from O’Hare International
Airport. That’s 10 hours in the car
every week, assuming traffic is
light and weather accommodating.
“When I think about how
that time could be dedicated to
finishing a book for my seminar
or even getting more sleep, I regret
commuting at those moments,”
she says.

26 | northbynorthwestern.com

While commuting eliminates
the expense of room and
board—$14,389 as of the 201415 school year—it adds to
the stress of travel and time
management onto already busy
students. Northwestern estimates
commuters
spend
$984
on
transportation each academic year.
A dollar sign, however, doesn’t
capture the mental and physical
stress of hours of driving on very
little sleep.
Weinberg freshman Kathryn
Fajardo drives from Schaumburg,
Ill., roughly an hour away from
campus. She says she had no idea

of the toll commuting would take
on her health when she decided to
live at home.
“I get anxiety because of it,” she
says. “I didn’t expect it to be that
strenuous on me.”
Parking on campus has proven
to be an obstacle for Fajardo.
Commuters can purchase parking
permits for $446.40 for the
entire academic year. These are
specifically designated for students
who live outside the walking zone
surrounding Northwestern, but
most of the parking lots are not
close to academic buildings.
“It’s a pain in the butt,

honestly,” Fajardo says.
In between classes, most
Northwestern students can go
back to their dorm rooms or catch
up with friends at a dining hall
courtesy of a university meal plan.
But commuters don’t really have
a place to call their own. Murillo
says she can squat in friends’ dorm
rooms or sit in Norris trying to
do homework. In 2006, alumni
donated money to build a lounge
specifically for commuters on the
ground floor of Norris, but i’s not
monitored by any staff and is open
to any Northwestern student who
wants a little peace and quiet.

But even knowing enough
people on campus to call in favors
can be challenging.
Fajardo was the only student
from her high school graduating
class to attend Northwestern,
which means she had to start fresh
at college without living there.
“I lack that dorm community,”
Fajardo says. “As a freshman, I
think that’s really necessary.”
Despite the frustrations of
staying late for club meetings
and other events, Murillo and
Fajardo have found ways to join
communities outside of dorm life.
Murillo joined a dance group

and a pre-med mentorship
program, providing her with
support
from
upperclassmen
who can give her advice about
Northwestern life. Fajardo chose
Greek life. She says her new
chapter understands her situation
and offers to let her crash in an
empty room whenever she needs.
“Thankfully I have sorority life
and I have people there for me and
... the house to go to if I have no
classes,” she says. “They’ve been
really supportive.”
Encouragement from home has
helped Fajardo “push through” the
beginning of her freshman year,

she says. Her parents want her to
have as much of a typical college
experience as possible, rearranging
her room at home to look like a
dorm room, complete with a lofted
bed and reading corner. She calls
it a “mock college life,” one that
requires her to carry an extra bag
of clothes and toiletries in her car
in case she decides to sleep over.
On the flip side of living
at home, life can start to seem
remarkably similar to high school:
going to class and then coming
home to do homework and
sleep. House chores and family
responsibilities can pile up, a factor

most college students can forget
when they leave home.
“When I’m at home, I still have
to be on top of my things, especially
because my parents are still around
and they still act as if I’m in high
school,” Murillo says. ”They still
ask, ‘Why haven’t you started on
your homework?’”
But
Northwestern
keeps
commuters coming back.
“I decided to sacrifice the
whole going off and living the
typical college life for the quality
of Northwestern’s education,” she
says. “And I would do it again.”

Photo by MICHAEL NOWAKOWSKI
winter 2015 | 27

QUAD

PUTT-ING UP WITH THE COLD
JUST TO THE SIDE of the main
Patten
Gymnasium
entrance
stands an inconspicuous door
with a keypad lock, marked only
by a small “Wildcats Golf” sticker.
Inside is a hidden treasure in the
world of Northwestern athletics:
the Gleacher Golf Center.
It gives the teams a rare
recruiting advantage over warm
weather schools, helping attract
top recruits and allowing players
to practice regardless of windchill.
“People want to come to
Northwestern because it’s such
a great school and we’ve got a
great history developing players,”
says Pat Goss, the former head
coach of the men’s team for 18
seasons who was promoted last
summer to director of golf and
player development. “But the first
question is always, ‘What about
the winter?’”
With the Gleacher Center,
the team has an answer to that
question. It’s a place where
student-athletes can chip, putt
and relax during brutal winter
months, according to Goss. The

28 | northbynorthwestern.com

facility includes a 2,400-squarefoot green to practice both putting
and chipping, a sand trap to
practice bunker shots, a video
room outfitted with specialized
lighting, a locker area and a
players’ lounge.
These features have helped
the program attract top golfers to
Northwestern, including multiple
All-Americans, players who have
gone on to the PGA or European
tours after graduating and even
2013 U.S. Amateur champion Matt
Fitzpatrick, who left after a quarter
to focus on his professional career.
“Even from the very beginning
it’s been a huge tool in recruiting,”
says head coach David Inglis. “It
attracts kids to stay in the Midwest
and allows them to practice and
improve their golf year-round.”
The team’s most well-known
alum, former world No. 1 Luke
Donald, won the NCAA Division I
Men’s Golf Championship months
after the Gleacher Center opened
in January 1999.
“That was not coincidental,”
Goss says.

Goss began thinking about the
construction of an indoor facility
in the mid-1990s, but he couldn’t
find a place to build something
from the ground up. With the
help of facility workers, he found
the old pool area in Patten Gym,
which was then being used for
storage. With a go-ahead from
university administration and a
generous donation from golf team
alum Eric Gleacher, the facility,
which cost roughly $1 million,
was built.
NU was the first school in
the country to build a significant
indoor golf facility, but after the
Gleacher Center’s completion,
many colleges have followed suit
and built similar facilities. About
50 schools have toured the space
before building their own practice
centers, Goss says.
“The formula we came up with
here continues to work,” he says.
Multiple players on the
current roster hail from warmweather states, choosing to come
to Northwestern to help fine-tune
skills during winter training.

“It’s a good break to get away
from just competition all the time
and try to focus on what you need
to work on and improve for down
the road,” says Communication
senior Matthew Negri.
Inglis shares a similar view on
the benefits of training indoors,
focusing daily on fundamental
skills instead of playing 18 holes
during the off-season.
“We’re really focused on
helping our guys develop the skills
necessary to go play professional
golf,” he says. “And this facility
is a huge part of that because it
means that we’re in a controlled
environment and we can really
isolate the skills that these guys
need to work on.”
Beyond
advantages
in
recruiting warm-weather golfers
and taking a step back from
scoring to focus on improvement,
the Gleacher Center also gives the
golf teams an intangible benefit.
“This gave the kids a home,”
Goss says.

A group of engineering students uses recycled materials to build a solar-powered charging station.

Photo by Alex Furuya

B Y PR E E T I S H A S EN
MORE THAN 30 percent of all
electric capacity installed in the
U.S. in 2014 came from the sun.
The Solar Energy Industries
Association predicts 2015 will
be the year of the millionth solar
installation in the U.S. With the
completion of a three-year project
called SmartTree, that milestone
could happen here in Evanston.
Engineers for a Sustainable
World (ESW) takes on many
projects that contribute to a
healthier environment. Managed
by McCormick junior Hassan
Ali and McCormick sophomore
Francis Chen, SmartTree will
feature USB and AC outlets for
students to use outside of Norris.
The tree, designed to be a 15-foottall aluminum structure with
benches for people to sit on, will
use eight 4-foot-long solar panels.
But SmartTree is not as simple
as it sounds. Due to the sheer size
of the project, Ali and Chen have
to make sure everything about the
SmartTree design is safe and usable
through virtual load analyses
before the project is actually built.
While ESW works on multiple

projects each year, none have
been as focused as SmartTree. The
projects usually tackle broader
goals like learning more about
wind power or water efficiency,
but the SmartTree team was given
one assignment: Build it.
The project began when the
Ford Motor Company Engineering
Design Center donated solar
panels to ESW in 2012. After a few
brainstorming sessions, SmartTree
was born. For Ali and Chen, the
project is about more than just
assembling a team and getting
the work done. There are many
managerial tasks, from meeting
potential investors to working
with the Office of Sustainability on
questions of location and safety.
“I’ve done a lot of projects on
my own,” says Chen.“But actually
being a project manager, I feel
like I improve on so much, like
communication with people and
how you manage a project, apply
for grants, everything like that.”
Because of the project’s size,
Ali and Chen must run tests using
software that assumes the device
can withstand certain amounts of

natural pressures, such as snow
in the winter. The tests ensure
the device will meet NU’s safety
standards before installation.
These load analyses are
typically done by civil engineers,
which, unfortunately for Ali and
Chen, is not a very popular major
at Northwestern. The school has
never awarded more than 30
degrees in civil engineering per
year, according to the Northwestern
University Institutional Research
Office. Ali have tried to run the
analyses themselves, but they say
it’s not easy.
“This was definitely the hardest
part, trying to work with software,”
says Ali. “It’s very tough to
understand the data it gives back
to you. We keep running into this
wall of [thinking], ‘We need more
people with expertise to help us.’”
Still, Ali and Chen were able
to run enough tests to determine
that the original 18-foot-tall model
was not sustainable. Instead, the
structure was reduced by 3 feet to
ensure stability, with changes to
make the tree trunk more durable.
The team has made substantial

progress over the past few
months. After finding a hardy
and inexpensive design for
the mounting brackets that sit
between the solar panels and
branches, Chen’s electrical team
ran several tests on the battery
pack and charging systems to
ensure the design will be ready for
manufacturing.
Once the students finish
outlining the project and it gets
approved by Northwestern, it will
be passed on to an outside vendor,
since the University doesn’t
have the production capacity. Ali
and Chen say once they reach
that stage, they will still oversee
SmartTree’s building process as
well as construct the benches and
electrical system. Right now, the
key is to perfect the load analysis
and ensure durability of the
SmartTree, but Ali looks forward
to getting past challenges like this.
“I personally like problem
solving,” Ali says. “So any time
we encounter some kind of road
block, for me it’s just like another
opportunity to research and find
new solutions.”

winter 2015 | 29

QUAD

RESTED AND RECHARGED

WHEN
COMMUNICATION
junior Priyanka Thakrar packed
her bags to study abroad in Paris,
she expected a quarter filled with
adventure, culture, good eats and
new friends. She did not, however,
anticipate the injury that cut her
European trip short, sending her
home and forcing her to take time
off from school to heal.
For
many
Northwestern
students, life’s ups and downs
put a roadblock in the college
timeline, luring them away from
campus and leading them to take
time off. While taking time away
from school can seem daunting,
mysterious or even stigmatized,
many Wildcats have found that
time off has been necessary for
their well-being.
Thakrar had to make the
decision to take a break from her
studies in France due to spinal pain
from an old injury.
“I immediately had to fly to
London because I have family

30 | northbynorthwestern.com

there, and doctors told me I needed
to have surgery right away,”
Thakrar says. “I really had no
option at that point but to take a
medical leave.”
Fortunately
for
Thakrar,
the
administration
at
both
Northwestern and her university
in Paris made the process of taking
time off and returning to school
extremely smooth. Her academic
advisers were accommodating and
did most of the work for her, she
says, with only a few forms and
surveys on her end. Weinberg says
on its webpage that students “may
generally take time off from their
studies and return to Northwestern
whenever they choose to do so. No
special permission for a leave of
absence is required.”
By filling out just a few forms,
students who feel the need to
withdraw from their studies,
especially for work or financial
reasons, can return to the school
when they feel ready. A Former

BY SARAH E HLE N

Returning Student Application
must be completed through
the Office of the Registrar, and
according
to
the
Weinberg
Undergraduate
Handbook,
Weinberg advisers “can help
[students]
with
the
return
process, the transition back to
Northwestern, and planning [their]
next steps.”
When it comes to taking time
off for mental health reasons,
however, policies and procedures
become a little stickier. In an effort
to promote students’ health and
success in the NU community,
the University takes situations
involving mental illness on a caseby-case basis.
The process for requesting a
medical leave of absence consists
of three steps: completing a
Request for Voluntary Medical
Leave form, contacting CAPS or
Health Services and making an
appointment with the Dean of
Students Office. A medical leave of

absence typically requires students
to take at least two quarters off.
“Their reasoning is that
you need time to heal,” says
Communication
junior
Sarah
Mowaswes, who returned to NU at
the beginning of this past quarter
after taking a leave in the fall.
Over the course of the past
quarter, Mowaswes not only
learned about the logistics of
taking time off at Northwestern,
but she also encountered evidence
of a certain stigma that surrounds
taking a quarter or two off.
Students here often equate leaving
with failure and admitting defeat,
she says.
“If you ask people on campus
if they have thought about taking
time off, the numbers are certainly
much, much higher than you
would assume,” Mowaswes says.
“Recovery is not easy and it takes
time and work and support, and
anyone who looks down upon that
has none of my respect.”

Photo by Jack Birdsall

Taking a quarter (or two) off from school has its benefits.

EXPANDING HOUSING
HORIZONS

Photo by Thomas Molash. Illustration by Vasiliki Valkanas

The University plans to shake up on-campus housing.
BY CAROLINE LE VY

IN CASE you haven’t seen the
construction at 560 Lincoln St., oncampus housing is getting a makeover.
Buildings are not all that’s
changing. As part of the University’s
Housing Master Plan, all sophomores
will be required to live on campus,
though Greek housing will count
toward the living requirement. The
new plan could be implemented as
soon as 2017, says Paul Riel, executive
director of Residential Services.
The Housing Master Plan
anticipates that by 2025, nine
residence halls will be renovated, four
demolished and five built. The plan
was completed in the spring of 2014
and will be released to campus before
Spring Break this year, Riel says.
ASG Student Life Vice President
Chris Harlow says he thinks the living
requirement “will cause a lot of stir the
first two years.”
Harlow,
along
with
other
students from ASG, the Residence
Hall Association and the Residential
College Board, gave Residential
Services input throughout the process
of devising the housing plan.

“[Sophomores] are an important
population to continue to support
academically, socially and culturally
in a residential environment,” Riel
says. “The possibility exists that
students will continue to do better
at Northwestern if they’re living on
campus their second year.”
The requirement aims to increase
engagement with other students and
the University more so than retention,
since the latter is not a major concern
at Northwestern.
Riel explains that national data
suggests the first two years at college
are often the most important—and
sometimes the most difficult—in
relation to academic success. He
also noted that this type of living
requirement is fairly common,
particularly at elite institutions.
Some schools require students to
live on campus for four years, but
Northwestern doesn’t have enough
real estate to accommodate that policy,
according to Residential Services.
All new buildings will be suitestyle and will include more public
indoor spaces, like lounge areas for

students to spend time together, Riel
says. Several existing buildings, such
as Foster-Walker Complex, will be
renovated to also have more lounge
space.
Still, many students move off
campus because the cost of living is
cheaper. Between the required meal
plan for on-campus residents and the
increasing cost of on-campus housing,
Evanston housing will likely continue
to have a cheaper price tag.
“I don’t think structural changes
alone will keep people on campus,”
Harlow says.
Weinberg senior Gina Krupp
moved off campus as a sophomore.
She describes the general trajectory
of student living as going from on
campus to off campus—and staying
off.
“It never would’ve crossed my
mind to go back on campus, because I
think in a sense I just graduated from
being in a dorm and having an RA,”
Krupp says. “There’s just a sense of
autonomy that I wouldn’t want to give
up since gaining it.”
Harlow says that in addition to the

new facilities, the University should
develop more programming like that
of residential colleges.
In the last few years, Residential
Services has developed neighborhood
concepts, or groups of residence halls
in an area on campus. In fall 2013, they
created neighborhood desks, which
cover multiple residence halls and are
staffed 24/7 by RAs or community
service officers.
The social community within
neighborhoods will largely be up to
students to create and maintain.
“We’re trying to really allow the
populations that live there to define
how they establish community,”
Riel says. “We really want those
populations to manage that.”
As construction continues, Riel
says students will be invited to the
buildings and encouraged to provide
feedback on the layouts.
“Students’ input is important
because they will be using and living
in the buildings,” Riel says. “They’ll
be engaged all the way through the
process.”

winter 2015 | 31

QUAD

Some of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most prolific companies started in garages. The Garage hopes to foster a similar entrepreneurial spirit.

Revving Up the
Garage

Entrepreneurs will soon have a place to build, fail and learn.
BY NICHOLAS HAGAR

32 | northbynorthwestern.com

with the resources to develop
their ideas.
“It’s a place that will have no
school boundaries, so it’s open to
every student from every corner
of the university,” Löffler says.
“This is very important because
what we want, what we believe
in, is that the best ideas, the best
innovations come from that
intersection of many disciplines.
That’s where the real magic
happens.”
Linda Darragh, executive
director of the Kellogg Innovation
and Entrepreneurship Initiative,
reinforces the hope that students
from all areas of study will take
advantage of the Garage. She
says the best teams are those
with students who come from a
variety of disciplines.
“The Garage serves ... as
a place where students from
across campus can gather, learn
from each other and build

to support their startup, they
[sometimes] don’t know where
to go for that,” Han says. “They
have ideas, they just don’t know
how to pursue them.”
According to Han, finding
mentorship and recruiting likeminded students are common
startup challenges.
The hope is that a company
will come out of this space,
but Löffler also stresses the
importance of giving students a
place where they can fail.
“When you take classes, you
are not allowed to experiment
and fail. But somehow in life
you learn the most out of your
failures,” she says. “And if you’re
an entrepreneur, the more
failures you have, the better you
become.”
Currently, entrepreneurial
students work in the Design
Studio inside the Ford Motor
Company Engineering Design

“AND IF YOU’RE AN
ENTREPRENEUR, THE MORE
FAILURES YOU HAVE, THE
BETTER YOU BECOME.”

P h o t o by S e a n M ag ne r

AMAZON, APPLE, DISNEY,
Google, Hewlett-Packard, and
Nike all began in garages. Starting
this summer, Northwestern
students will have a new space
to develop ideas and work on
building businesses. A nod
to America’s entrepreneurial
greats, this space will be called
the Garage.
“This is a space for students
to collaborate, to come with
great ideas, to build ideas and to
fail many times and learn how
to do that ... and in the process
hopefully to create something
incredibly good that will
change the world,” says Alicia
Löffler, executive director of

Northwestern’s Innovations and
New Ventures Office.
The Garage, which is
currently under construction,
will be a collaborative workspace
located in the parking garage
structure on the north side
of campus. The idea initially
came from the Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Committee
of NU’s Board of Trustees and
is funded entirely through
donations, including $4 million
from NU trustees Michael
Ferro Jr. and Pat Ryan Jr. Slated
to officially open June 16, the
space is designed to bring
together students from different
disciplines and provide them

relationships,” she says.
About a third of the space
will serve as an open workshop
where students can work on
projects and discuss their ideas.
It will also host entrepreneurial
classes, clubs, workshops and
other programming. The rest
of the space will be reserved
for students involved in the
Garage’s venture residency
program, which will give
student teams special mentoring
and networking opportunities in
addition to 24/7 access.
“Those students will be
coached,” Löffler says. “They
will go through a boot camp of
how to think about [their] ideas.”
The Garage will provide a
space where students can learn
the mechanics of running a
startup. As of yet, the Garage
has not chosen a director. Once
one is chosen, he or she will
begin to shape more specific
programming for the space.
Suzee Han, a Weinberg
senior and co-presidentoof
Northwestern’s entrepreneurial
student group EPIC, says she
hopes the Garage will help
student entrepreneurs overcome
common startup challenges.
“When students need money

Center, which Han and her fellow
students call the “hub.” She says
it does have its limitations. The
space is a public room, which
means it is not always available
or large enough for some events.
Han hopes the Garage will be
able to address these problems
but is also concerned the new
space may still be too small.
Michael
Marasco,
who
oversees the Farley Center
for
Entrepreneurship
and
Innovation and serves as
the executive director on the
Garage’s search committee,
advises students not to rely too
much on the space.
“One of the things that you
have to keep in mind in terms
of an incubator [is that] the
business doesn’t survive or
thrive in the incubator,” Marasco
says. “Hanging out in the Garage
isn’t going to make your business
successful.”
Darragh sees it as a venture
that will develop over time.
“I think people can think
it’s going to be a miracle, and
people will just be coming out
the door hand-in-hand with new
businesses every day,” Darragh
says. “It’s a vision that will
manifest itself over many years.”
winter 2015 | 33

he backlash to Kappa Kappa Gamma and
Zeta Beta Tau’s Jail N’ Bail philanthropy
event was swift on social media and
then in print. Scathing Facebook and Twitter
responses appeared almost immediately. A
“student collective” signed a letter to The Daily
Northwestern calling out the event for showing
the white privilege endemic in Northwestern’s
Greek community.
34 | northbynorthwestern.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Though the intentions of these Greek
organizations may have been playful, the
symbolism and context of their actions deserve
scrutiny,â&#x20AC;? the students wrote. The group included
students from MIXED, Students for Justice in
Palestine, Coalition of Colors, Pulse Magazine,
Sustained Dialogue, MEChA de Northwestern,
FMO, APAC and Northwestern University
College Feminists.
winter 2015 | 35

Eighteen girls had posed on
Northwestern’s campus wearing
orange jumpsuits. They made
Kappa Kappa Gamma hand signs,
their hands pointed in opposite
directions with thumbs touching
and the index and middle fingers
of each hand pointed out. “Come
to the rock [sic] on Halloween and
donate any amount to bail your
favorite people out of jail!” read the
event description, explaining that
Jail N’ Bail would benefit Reading
is Fundamental, a literacy nonprofit
for underserved children.
Many in the NU community
found Jail N’ Bail offensive
because members of a mostly
white group of women pretended
to be prisoners, imitating a system
from which they are far removed.
In the U.S., more than 2 million
people are currently incarcerated, a
disproportionate number of whom
are people of color. According to
the NAACP, 58 percent of prisoners
in 2008 were black or Hispanic.
The Kappa fundraiser seemed to
be trivializing the plight of those
affected by mass incarceration.
According to its website,
Reading is Fundamental’s “highest
priority is reaching underserved
children from birth to age 8.” The
student collective wrote in The
Daily that the “decision to raise
money for disadvantaged children
by parodying the very system
that oppresses these parents and
families demonstrates the harm
that can result from communities
failing to take into account their
own privilege,” pointing out that
Department of Justice statistics
show that black and Hispanic
children are much more likely
than white children to have an
incarcerated parent.
To many people, the event
came off as tone-deaf and painfully
ignorant of the real issues Jail N’
Bail mocked. The “fact that a group
of wealthy Northwestern students
are ‘playacting’ at being prisoners
(most of whom are poor) is a
blatant belittling of the realities of
mass incarceration and the prisonindustrial complex,” wrote Ajay
Nadig in a letter to the editor in The
Daily.
Kappa and ZBT both released
short statements apologizing for
the event. “Kappa Kappa Gamma
regrets organizing the Jail N’ Bail
event due to its offensive nature,”
the sorority said. “We expect our
members to promote integrity,
respect and regard for others at all
times and we apologize to the NU
community.”

36 | northbynorthwestern.com

Then-president
of
NU’s
Panhellenic Association, Frances
Fu, went further. The SESP senior
wrote a personal statement about
the event, apologizing while also
asking for forgiveness. While Jail
N’ Bail seemed to prove she hadn’t
accomplished everything she’d
wanted to when she began her
term, writing an open letter was
an opportunity to unite her activist
experience with her PHA position.
“We didn’t want to issue a
bullshit statement,” she says. “I felt
like, I don’t know, as someone who
has been on the activist side, on the
side of marginalized communities
before, that’s like the last thing that
people want to hear.”
Fu’s letter was two pages long,
released as a public Google Doc.
“Our Greek community used
someone else’s narrative to raise
money for our philanthropy, and

campus, this incident threw it into
sharp relief.
CHANGEMAKERS
After the Jail N’ Bail outcry, the
PHA began talking about how to
prevent something similar from
ever happening again. Fu met with
Kappa, the Office of Fraternity
and Sorority Life and Lesley-Ann
Brown-Henderson, the executive
director of the Department of
Campus Inclusion and Community
at Northwestern. Out of these
conversations came the idea of
the diversity and inclusion chair,
though PHA is not allowed to force
chapters to create new positions,
meaning sororities do not have to
adopt this new chair.
“I think it was a good
suggestion. I’m not sure how
effective it’s going to be,” said
Michelle Lega, a member of Chi

IΓ I DΣΓΣΠD THΣ GRΣΣK
CΩMMUΠITY, THΣN
THΔT’S LIKΣ BΣTRΔYING
A PΔRT ΩΓ MYSΣLΓ
although we did not act out of
malice, we should be ashamed of
our ignorance,” she wrote. “Our
goal is not simply to move on—to
check things off on our ‘Diversity
& Inclusion’ checklist to prove
that we ‘get it’ now. Our goal is to
change the culture of Greek life,
the culture of Northwestern, the
culture of the world.”
In the letter, Fu told readers
about a new diversity and inclusion
chair that would be implemented
in each sorority.
Nadig read this letter. He says
he hopes the sororities see the
positions through and don’t decide
that just announcing the new
position is enough to enact change.
“I think the worst thing you can
do is do the first round of backpatting after that,” he says.
Jail
N’
Bail
pushed
Northwestern’s sororities into a
tough conversation about diversity
and inclusion. While the privilege
of the Greek system has always
been a topic of conversation on

Omega and former recruitment
chair. “For example, in my chapter
we haven’t really heard much
about that.”
Chi O chose a diversity and
inclusion chair at the end of
February, President Mattie Biggs
wrote in an email.
Incoming
PHA
President
Katherine Doyle says even if
chapters do not create a new
position dedicated to diversity
and inclusion, she thinks that each
chapter will have a “point person”
who will work on these issues.
Some sororities must clear the
creation of a new chair with their
national organizations. Others may
decide the duties of a diversity and
inclusion chair would work better
when folded into the duties of
another position.
PHA also plans to slightly
adjust the way philanthropy events
are approved. At the time of Jail N’
Bail, PHA asked chapters to submit
the dates of philanthropy events
and a description of the events

themselves through a Microsoft
Word form attached to an email.
Chapters were not required to
submit public relations ideas or
thoughts on how the event related
to the charity it would benefit.
This, Fu says, is how Kappa’s event
fell through the cracks. While the
sorority had been hosting Jail N’
Bail for years along with Kappa
chapters around the nation, the
Facebook photo, coupled with
the disconnect from Reading is
Fundamental’s mission to help
underserved children, made the
event especially offensive to many
students. PHA never got a chance
to see these potential pitfalls.
“A lot of times philanthropy
is so separated from the original
cause,” Fu says.
Doyle hopes to add a question
on the philanthropy form asking,
“How do you think this event
will be perceived by the greater
community?” A question like this,
she says, will help each chapter
pause and reflect on their event
for a moment longer than usual,
hopefully catching potentially
offensive ideas.
“We don’t think that our
chapters have any sort of negative
intention,” she says. “I see my
job as helping them clarify their
good intentions and helping
them prevent any unintended
consequences.”
Doyle was the vice president
of public relations for PHA before
being elected president this past
November. She performed her
role in public relations through
this winter’s recruitment, and was
formally installed as president
on Feb. 5. As the VP of PR during
and after Jail N’ Bail, she says she
constantly questioned what she
could have done differently to stop
what happened.
“I couldn’t help but wish that
I had somehow anticipated a
problem and helped them through
that,” Doyle says. “Had I seen
the Facebook PR beforehand?
No. But could I have led better
workshops, could I have had better
conversations proactively about PR to
avoid that ever happening? Maybe.”
When asked about the event
now, Fu still tears up.
“It’s actually shocking right
now that I’m still getting upset
thinking about it and talking about
it,” she says. As a self-proclaimed
member of the “more activist side
of Northwestern,” working with
Students for Sensible Drug Policy
and Sexual Health and Assault
Peer Education before becoming

president of the PHA, Fu had
hoped to use her experiences and
expertise to make changes within
the Greek system.
“If I defend the Greek community,
then that’s like betraying a part
of myself,” she says, speaking of
the process of writing her open
letter. “But at the same time, as
someone who’s trying to elevate
the community and working with
people who want to elevate the
community, I couldn’t just be like,
‘Yeah this was wrong,’ and just
kind of like ditch people who are
trying to make things better. So
that was really a struggle for me.”
Because rules for creating new
positions differ for each sorority,
the diversity and inclusion chair
hasn’t taken off right away. Some
chapters have already created
and appointed members to the
position, while others have yet
to do so. PHA began discussing
the position last quarter, but new
sorority presidents began their
terms this winter. Some, like Pi
Beta Phi President Anya Ring,
were therefore not present when
PHA started these ideas.
“There’s definitely a learning
curve,” says Ring of the transition
process.
Since taking office this quarter,
Ring has engaged in talks about
how to implement the position.
Delta Delta Delta, on the other
hand, already has a diversity and
inclusion chair. Tri-delt President
Grace Lindner says Willow
Pastard, the new chair, was perfect
for the role and asked to take it on.
“She kind of has had this role in
an unofficial sense in our chapter
by making everyone aware of
cool events on campus that maybe
we wouldn’t attend, because
we wouldn’t know that they’re
happening,” Lindner says. “I think
she just wanted to make it into
more of an official position so that
we could do more with it.”
Lindner says the position will
be about making the chapter aware
of diversity on campus and in
Chicago by bringing in speakers,
setting up events and more. For
their first event, the sorority went
to see Selma, the film about voting
rights marches led by Martin
Luther King, Jr. in 1965.
Tri-delt created the new
position after getting it approved
by their executive office, which
Lindner says was an easy process.
“I think in terms of positions,
it’s not that hard to get anything
approved because it’s obviously
all for the good of the chapter,” she

says. “Why would they ever say no
to a diversity chair?”
As for Kappa, President Caroline
Hatch wrote in an email that she is
“unable to speak at this time but
Kappa Kappa Gamma is fully
onboard with the Greek and larger
Northwestern community’s plans
regarding Diversity and Inclusion!”
Elizabeth Bailey, fraternity vice
president for Kappa’s national
organization, wrote in an email that
“Kappa Kappa Gamma’s Upsilon
Chapter has taken the suggestion
by the Northwestern Panhellenic
Association very seriously.” She
wrote that Kappa members “have
taken part in an Intent/Impact
dialogue hosted by Northwestern
University’s Assistant Director
for
Campus
Inclusion
and
Community,” Michelle Enos.
GENERAL MEMBERS

sorority. It opened me to so many
new experiences,” she says. “I
think I would have been a lot more
enclosed or ignorant if I hadn’t,
because so many people in my
sorority are involved in so many
things on campus. My friends
before joining a sorority, we were
kind of a homogenous group. We
were all from the same income
level. We were all white, so joining
a sorority, interestingly, made my
friend group more diverse.”
Still, she knows there’s work to
be done. On one promising note,
she hopes sexuality is not a reason
people decline to join Greek life.
Lega identifies as queer.
Weinberg freshman Tiffany
Anderson is one of Lega’s newest
Chi O sisters. She says that she
was looking at the diversity of
each chapter as she went through
recruitment.

I THIΠK I’M JΔDΣD BY
GRΣΣK LIΓΣ, BUT I
HΔVΣ BΣCΩMΣ MΩRΣ
PΔSSIΩΠATΣ ΔBΩUT
WΩMΣΠ, ΔND WΩMΣΠ’S
ΣMPΩWΣRMΣΠT
While she discussed the issue
with her Chi O sorority sisters,
Lega says talking with fellow
members of College Feminists
convinced her to sign the letter to
The Daily responding to Jail N’ Bail.
She wanted to show that there are
members of Greek life “who are
trying to be more aware of these
issues and trying to help others in
Greek life be more aware as well.”
“I agreed with the criticism,”
Lega says. “It was poorly thought
out. I don’t want to necessarily
demonize the whole chapter.
I don’t want to demonize the
women who put this event on, but
at the same time, it required more
forethought.”
Lega is passionate about the
issue of diversity in Greek life and
believes that she has developed a
more diverse group of friends and
has gotten more involved in social
justice issues at Northwestern due
to her membership in a sorority.
“I definitely am glad I joined a

“I was looking at how diverse
are they, do they have a lot of
different types of people in them,”
says Anderson, who identifies as
black. “That was a big factor for
me. Because you don’t want to be
the token minority in a sorority.”
According to a 2014 survey by
the Division of Student Affairs,
PHA and IFC at Northwestern are
less than 2 percent black. Students
who identify as Asian or Pacific
Islander make up 10 percent of
PHA and IFC, while 9 percent
identify as Hispanic and 5 percent
as two or more races. Lega says
she’s noticed that the national
Chi O Facebook page often posts
pictures of all white groups of
women.
“It’s certainly our problem
and our fault more than it is the
people choosing to go through
recruitment, choosing to join these
chapters,” Lega says. “But it’s sort
of like, I don’t know, displaying
these pictures of all white chapters
is just going to do more to dissuade

women of color from going
through the process. “
Anderson says she is happy
with Chi O and thinks it is a diverse
group of people. “Everyone’s really
nice,” she says. “I could see myself
being best friends with these girls
for four years, or even past that.”
The friendships in Greek life are
what drove Weinberg sophomore
Car Jansen to join Chi O as well.
But that doesn’t stop Jansen, who
identifies as queer, from wondering
what Greek life could do to become
less heteronormative.
“I think that it’d be a good thing
to have options for people who
don’t fall inside the gender binary,”
she says. “I don’t really know what
the solution would be, but I do
think it’s restrictive to only be like
sororities for women, fraternities
for males, that leave out people
who maybe don’t identify as either
of those.”
This issue occurred to Nadig
as well, who says he doesn’t
think Greek life can change
while remaining Greek life as he
conceives it.
“If they were to solve the
problem, then they wouldn’t like
be what I think to be Greek life
anymore,” he says. “It would be a
very different institution, which is
not a bad thing.”
The institution of Greek life
has changed to become more
inclusive several times over the
years, mostly in terms of race.
While Northwestern’s first black
fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi,
was founded in 1917, it was not
recognized by IFC and the National
Pan-Hellenic Council until 1941,
according to the Office of Fraternity
and Sorority Life. Black women
didn’t pledge sororities until 1967.
The first Latina- and Latino-based
chapters came to Northwestern in
2000 and 2001, respectively, and the
first Asian-interest sorority, Kappa
Phi Lambda, was founded in 2003.
“I think it’s also important to
realize you know, contextually
at Northwestern, I think maybe
three to five years ago, we weren’t
even having conversations about
diversity,” says Ben Wiebers,
assistant director at the Office of
Fraternity and Sorority Life. “It
was something we knew existed,
but we weren’t necessarily talking
about it, and within the last couple
of years, students have really taken
a hold through social media and
forums and talking about, ‘Hey,
this is an issue that really matters.’”
Nadig, too, thinks issues of
diversity have boiled to the surface

winter 2015 | 37

in recent years more strongly than
before.
“I think it was super easy to go
about your day without talking
about race issues like before Trayvon
Martin,” he says. “Of course all these
things were super present. They’re
all like these awful things that
happened. But I think as a wealthy
college student you could very
much go about your day and not
think about it. But I think that really
changed after the Trayvon Martin
shooting. I think it really became,
this is something you confront,
wherever you go, all the time.”

and sometimes it ends up being a
choice of, ‘Do I stay in the chapter?
Because I can’t really pay for this,’”
she says. Tri-delt offers installment
plans for paying dues, as well as
national scholarships.
IFC President Mark Nelson
summed up the difficulty of
making changes to finance.
“It’s so tough. The financial
stuff, it just sucks so bad,” he says.
“There’s got to be a more eloquent
way to say it, but to find a way to
fix that is so hard, because that’s
just an inherent thing about being
in a fraternity, you have to support
it financially.”

fraternity chapter at NU has a
national organization that oversees
it. PHA reports to the National
Panhellenic Conference. Then there’s
IFC, the Multicultural Greek Council,
NPHC and, of course, the Office of
Fraternity and Sorority Life.
That’s a lot of councils,
acronyms and administrations, a
lot of people who may or may not
be working toward the same goals.
And when diversity and inclusion
becomes a big issue, getting things
done can be tough. Fu speaks
of the “weird balance” among
PHA, each Northwestern chapter
and their national organizations.

FINANCIAL INCLUSION
A discussion about diversity in
Greek life isn’t complete without
talking about financial inclusion.
Chapter members must pay dues in
order to support the organization,
hold events and maintain a house
on campus. Those dues can end up
running too high, forcing people to
choose between staying in a social
group they love or going broke.
PHA
Vice
President
of
Administration Kathy Hong is
working on making sororities more
financially inclusive. She made
a financial matrix for this year’s
recruitment that was handed out to
potential new members, laying out the
financial obligations for each chapter.
“I thought that way, if they
had this information, they would
kind of know which chapters are a
more possible option,” Hong says.
“Which, in one way, it does really
suck that they may not be able to
choose the chapter that they really
want to choose because of finances,
but at the same time I think there’s
something great about each
chapter.”
Even with Hong’s matrix in
hand, however, potential new
members are still the ones who
must bring up financial issues with
the women they talk to at each
chapter, something some people
may not feel comfortable doing.
Hong agrees that there could be
more transparency in the process,
but says one of her main goals right
now is to analyze PHA’s finances
to see if more money could be
given out in scholarships.
Lindner, who served as Tri-delt’s
vice president of finance before
becoming president, says their diversity
and inclusion chair is interested in
financial inclusion as well.
“That has been a conversation
that we’ve opened up a little bit
more this year because it is hard
for some people to obviously pay,

38 | northbynorthwestern.com

CORDIALLY INVITES

TO JOIN OUR SISTERHOOD
CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME

ZETA THETA

PRESIDENT

TRANSPARENCY AND
RELATIONSHIPS
PHA is working to improve
awareness of diversity and
inclusion
at
Northwestern,
starting with the new chair
positions. There are many women
dedicated to working on it, such
as Lega and her sisters. But the fact
remains that Greek life is a hard
institution to change. There are many
organizations, each with their own
rules and regulations, all working
to please their own constituents
who may not be in tandem with
one another. Each sorority and

VP OF RECRUITMENT

There’s also the issue of working
with the Interfraternity Council,
an organization with very different
rules and regulations from PHA.
Another set of difficulties
exists in making connections
with the multicultural fraternities
and sororities when there is
an imbalance in resources and
membership between PHA and
IFC and the multicultural groups.
“We are all Greek, but like, we’re
really different in a lot of ways, and
a lot of people don’t understand
the underlying systems that create
conflict between people who are
different,” Fu says.
Outgoing Multicultural Greek

Council President Cindy Chen
says that for her, IFC and PHA
chapters reaching out to MGC
chapters feels welcoming, though
there’s no getting around the huge
size difference among the councils.
MGC, which includes groups
of both genders, has about 100
members in total, Chen says. PHA
and IFC together gave bids to 841
students in 2015.
“There’s nothing we can do
to change the size, because the
small, intimate community is part
of who we are as MGC,” she says.
“So what we can do is just to build
those personal relationships.”
Chen says while relationships
between council presidents start
off strong at the beginning of
presidents’ terms Winter Quarter,
they tend to die as the year goes
on. She blames this on the busy
Northwestern schedule.
Nelson is full of optimism. He
says he wants to meet with the
other council presidents every two
weeks to figure out how they can
work together, though he’s not sure
how those meetings will work.
There are difficulties in trying
to navigate the differences between
individual and national chapters
and among the several Greek
councils at NU, Doyle says. “We tell
people to join Greek life because
we’re not all the same person. So
there’s no point in pretending to all
have the same narrative.”
Doyle says it hurts her to hear
sorority women say, “It’s different
at Northwestern,” because she
wants to see women at NU work
with their national organizations
to create change there. She wants
Northwestern sororities to make
more of an effort to make national
Greek life progressive.
“First and foremost, you want
to focus on making your individual
chapter fabulous,” Doyle says.
“But then, let’s push for more. Let’s
start national conversations. Let’s
be trendsetters.”
Fu also believes in the power
of the women at Northwestern
to make changes. She’s less sure
about Greek life.
“I think I’m leaving my position
not necessarily more passionate
about Greek life. I think I’m jaded
by Greek life, but I have become
more passionate about women,
and women’s empowerment,” she
says. “PHA here has been pretty
progressive in a lot of different
ways that the National Panhellenic
Conference doesn’t necessarily
even understand yet. That’s where
I’m leaving my position.”

The

Grade
Escape
Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more to getting a 4.0
than just good study habits.
by Anne Li
Photos by Jeremy Gaines and
Michael Nowakowki

F

our accordion files rest on a cart
in the back of Deering Libraryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
University Archives. Each file
contains detailed records on the
respective yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distribution of
grades to Northwestern undergraduate
students, by letter grade and by school.
Maintained from 1969 to 2002,
typewritten
letters
and
numbers
document a measurement of success for
the students who receive them. And the
grades are important for their givers as
well. Successful students, to some extent,
indicate successful instructors.
The data contained in the accordion
files tells a story about how these two
players work with grades to tell the stories
they want told. It shows what happens
when students and professors manipulate
the grading system, when students
engage in GPA padding by seeking out
easier classes and professors even if they
consequently learn less, when universities
inflate grades to maintain a reputation.
No wonder critics argue that the
American grading system is in crisis
mode and that the versatility of the letters
themselves renders them more and more
meaningless each year.

winter 2015 | 39

A

ccording to Chris Healy, a
computer science professor at
Furman University, grade inflation
is “awarding a higher grade than
is deserved” or “awarding a
higher grade than what would’ve
been awarded in the past.”
Healy and former Duke
University
professor
Stuart
Rojstaczer worked together to
create gradeinflation.com, a project
that documents and illustrates
their research on grade inflation at
universities nationwide. Rojstaczer
is currently working on updating
the data beyond 2010.
The numerous charts on
the site show, among other
phenomena, that a student at a
private university fares better
GPA-wise than a student who
earned a similar SAT score in
high school but attends a public
university. The data charts how
the number of A’s assigned is
increasing while the number of
B’s and C’s is decreasing, leading
Healy to believe that the U.S.
is moving towards a pass-fail
system that was in place in the
19th century.
One of the schools included
in the data is Northwestern
University, which between 1990
and 2006 inflated less than 0.2
points, a rate slower than Brown’s
and Duke’s but quicker than
Harvard’s, which is frequently
criticized for its grade inflation.
The
numbers
tell
a
controversial story. When asked
for data on grade inflation, the
Office of the Provost, the Registrar
and even the Data Book all say
something along the lines of, “We
don’t keep data on grades,” or

“Northwestern does not publicize
GPA data.”
Healy doesn’t buy it. “I can’t
imagine how the administration
would not want to know,” he says.
“They might be embarrassed by
it. It might be because many of
Northwestern’s peer institutions
don’t publish [data on grades].”
Whatever the reason, the data
curated in the Archives confirms
Healy’s findings: At least between
1969 and 2002, after which the
Data Book stopped recording
overall undergraduate grades
distributed, NU has been inflating
undergraduate grades.
Out of all the grades
Northwestern distributed in 1969,
26.4 percent were A’s. By 1992, the
last year the Data Book recorded
the University’s overall grades, A’s
made up 41.1 percent of grades.
But what’s more stunning is
the different rates of inflation
between undergraduate schools.
McCormick, whose faculty is
known for projecting bell curves
after every exam to their students,
had the lowest amount of inflation
between 1969 and 2002, just 8
percent. Meanwhile, Bienen’s
distribution of A’s skyrocketed
from 53 percent in 1969 to 89
percent in 2002. SESP’s distribution
of A’s held most steady, hovering
around the upper ‘50s and lower
‘60s throughout the years.
Bienen
Dean
Toni-Marie
Montgomery did not respond to
requests for comment.
“It’s student evaluations, it’s
shopping around for colleges,”
Healy says regarding why grades
nationwide have been rising.
“The customer is always right,
and the consumerist model is that

WEINBERG GRADE TRENDS

40 | northbynorthwestern.com

college is a business in which the
students are the customers and
they are always right. They have
to be happy.”

W

hile the Civil Rights Era was
coming to a close and the
Vietnam War was just beginning,
Healy believes that educators
held a national discussion on the
effects of the American grading
system on college students.
The term “grade inflation”
made its first appearance in The
Daily Northwestern in 1974. In
1975, it was brought up again in
an article on students allegedly
manipulating their grades after
the “P/N” option was instituted.
The data justifies the hype.
The percentage of A’s distributed
spiked
between
1972
and
1973 in most Northwestern
undergraduate schools. 1973 was
the last year of conscription.
Before then, according to a 1976
article in the Chicago Daily
News, professors nationwide
gave men higher grades to help
them avoid being drafted to the
war in Vietnam.
The New York Times published
a piece in 1974 on grade inflation
and its effects on students. It
described a grade panic taking
over campus, when freshmen saw
grades not as an indicator of their
future aspirations but of their own
self-worth. As a result, incidents
of cheating apparently increased,
including at Northwestern, the
then-Weinberg assistant dean
was quoted as saying. Blame
began to circulate.
“The humanities majors blame
the pre-professional students. The
pre-med and pre-law students
blame their professors and
graduate schools for placing too
much emphasis on grades in
admissions decisions,” the article
states. “Some faculty members
blame the colleges themselves
for failing to foster closer contact
between students and instructors,
to convince students that there is
more to college than good grades.”
Four
decades
later,
undergraduate science and overall
GPAs still play an important role
in the Feinberg School of Medicine
admissions
process.
Because
Feinberg tries to holistically
review applications, GPAs are
considered
alongside
other

criteria, including the applicant’s
MCAT scores, knowledge of the
medical field and leadership
experience. But when applications
arrive at Feinberg, they’re sorted
into two piles. One pile contains
the applications of those who
meet the baseline GPA and MCAT
score. They’re automatically sent
to be reviewed by the admissions
committee. Feinberg’s entering
median GPA for the class of 2018
was a 3.87. The median science
GPA was a 3.86.
The other pile goes to Warren
Henry Wallace, associate dean
of admissions for Feinberg, who
looks to see if these applicants are
competitive in other aspects.
“It is difficult being an
undergraduate in a competitive
environment,
where
your
performance is going to affect
your future prospects regarding
medical school,” says Warren,
who believes that coping with
stress—even if it’s from grades—
is good practice for work in the
medical field. “But in a situation
where we have data that suggests
performance as an undergraduate
is a predictor, and that there are
twice as many seats as there are
applications, it’s gonna be a long
time before the GPA is not a part
of the evaluation of potential
medical school candidates.”
Although GPAs can determine
which
pile
your
Feinberg
application falls into, schools
like Northwestern don’t make
maintaining
near-4.0s
easy.
Mark Morel graduated from
Northwestern in 2014 and now
attends Emory School of Medicine.
He believes that the rigorous
course load at Northwestern
prepared him for the MCAT, but
he remembers students on the
pre-med padding their GPAs
by taking classes at Harvard
over the summer instead of at
Northwestern, because transfer
credits are not calculated into the
Northwestern GPA.
“One of my pre-med advisors
said that there were almost 800 premed kids in the freshman class,”
Morel says. “It whittles down to
200 by the time they’re seniors.”
Morel majored in art history
because he enjoyed the subject,
though he says the boost it gave
his GPA may have influenced his
decision “subconsciously.”
Morel graduated with a 3.8.

But what do grades mean for
undergraduate students? Their
meanings are perhaps impossible
to pinpoint without defining the
meaning of success. Nicky Hackett,
a second-year Feinberg student,
knew during his undergraduate
years at Vanderbilt that he
wanted to attend a prestigious
medical school. But the pressure
to maintain his GPA did not come
without consequences.
Hackett switched majors midfreshman year from engineering—a
subject he was genuinely interested
in—to religious studies, and then
again his sophomore year to a major
in medicine, health and society.
“I’m taking [a class] because this
is my life, not just an educational
opportunity to learn something,”
Hackett says. “Grades have a direct
effect on how I get to live my life.”
He hated the effect it had
on his classmates and that he
couldn’t “explore opportunities
that were interesting, in the spirit
of college.” Once, a friend who
was on the pre-med track and later
“dropped pre-med and became
a different human being” broke
down during a study session.
“[She] couldn’t figure out a
math problem and that brought
her to tears in a public place,”
Hackett recalls.
Hackett graduated with a “3.9
or something.”
“If there was no such thing
as GPA and I could’ve stuck in
engineering and done the same
thing, I would’ve done that,” he
says. “It was disappointing, for
sure. I’m kind of disappointed in
myself, because I didn’t take a risk.”

S

tephen Carr, undergraduate
dean of the McCormick School
of Engineering, does not believe

that grades are an indicator of
engineering aptitude.
But he does say grades can play
an indirect role in a professor’s
ability to gain positive reviews
when they are up for tenure or
contract renewal. Much of this
data is gathered through CTECs.
Of course, some considerations
must be made when reading
CTECs. Carr says that student
comments are more important
than scores and that freshmen are
more honest than older students
in their reviews. Some professors
grade hard but score high on their
CTECs. Manipulating one’s CTEC
scores is difficult, Carr says.
“If a professor had wanted to
inflate their CTEC scores by using
higher grades, it fails in effect to
gain higher CTEC scores. ‘The
professor’s a patsy, gives really
high grades,’” Carr conjectures.
Yet McCormick undergraduate
GPAs have been steadily creeping
upward in the past few years,
though Carr says not as quickly as
incoming freshmen standardized
test scores have been rising.
“One [reason for grade
inflation] is, we have better
students. And that is an
understatement.
So
when
professors assign grades to the
work done by their students, it’s
likely that they’re going to be quite
satisfied by the quality of their
work,” Carr says.
A second reason is that
professors are less confident that
giving poor grades—C’s and D’s
for example—makes sense.
“That is sort of a spontaneous
creep from the culture,” Carr says.
The
percentage
of
A’s
distributed
in
McCormick
increased 25.7 percent between
1978 and 2002. Overall SAT scores
of the entering freshman class

increased 16.4 percent in that
same time frame. SAT math scores
increased 11.2 percent.
McCormick
has
no
standardized rules for grade
assignment. The faculty handbook
states that McCormick faculty has
the option of distributing grades
on a scale where a 4.0-A reflects
“excellent” work, a 3.0-B reflects
“good” work and so on.
However, there are a few
school-wide rules: Grades must
fit a bell curve so that the top
students in the class receive A’s
and professors must inform
students on the first day of class
how grades will be assigned.

R

egarding grade inflation,
Carr admits it exists. But
“So what?”
For all his confidence in
McCormick’s grading system, Carr
doesn’t think that grades should
hold that much importance.
“Once you get into college,
it’s becoming more and more
important how you develop
yourself as a person, especially
how effective you can be,” he says.
“It means that you have ideas
that other people respect, and
probably you have the ability to
communicate the value of your
good ideas.”
And perhaps that’s the biggest
irony in the American grading
system. The accordion files in the
Archives tell a story of inflation
and manipulation. They tell the
story of students and professors
who rely on grades for their
success and emotional well-being.
In reality, the rules behind grade
assignments are so versatile
that the age-old standardized
measurement of success may
actually mean nothing at all.

winter 2015 | 41

42 | northbynorthwestern.com

IN FLUX

Title IX was once thought of as the final word on women in
college sports. Now, it’s shorthand for sexual assault protection.
But at Northwestern, is that enough?
BY RACHE L FOBAR
PHO TOS B Y MICHAE L NOWAKOW SKI
ART BY VASILIKI VALKANAS

Dillo Day was on May 25 in
2002. Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
performed and Julie* was just
three weeks shy of finishing up her
freshman year at Northwestern.
Thoughts of finals were far from
everyone’s mind, but instead of
celebrating the end of the school
year at the concerts with her
friends, Julie was trapped in a
living nightmare.
Julie, who published her story in
a now defunct student publication
two quarters after the incident,
says that as the day progressed,
she ended up at a fraternity house
with a group of people. One of
those people was a student with
whom she had previously been in
a physical relationship.
“After I’d had enough of
watching him stumble around
with his Bacardi, I made it my job
to get him up into his bed before
*names have been changed.

he passed out,” she writes. “Plan:
Direct him up onto his loft and go
home.”
Things didn’t work out as
she had planned, however. As
she turned to leave his room, he
blocked her path.
“My stomach dropped at the
heavy ‘thunk’ of the deadbolt,” she
writes. She says he picked her up
and threw her on his bed, where he
raped her three times.
In the last three weeks of the
school year, Julie says she struggled
through finals. Meanwhile, she
says he claimed he was too drunk
to remember the incident. She
spent the summer grappling
with anorexia, insomnia, suicidal
thoughts and drug use.
Julie says she didn’t want to
report the incident to the police,
whom she feared would be
insensitive and skeptical of her

story, especially since she had
willingly slept with him before the
alleged rape.
“To prosecute would mean that
I could be called a liar, that I would
not only have to relive the event but
prove I wasn’t lying,” she writes.
Back in the early 2000s, there were
fewer resources for sexual assault
victims, and Julie says she didn’t
know where to go.
She did, however, want to
protect other girls from the alleged
rapist, who had been hired as an
RA for the 2002-03 school year.
When Julie reported the incident
to the Office of Residential Life, she
says they refused to take action since
she “had not filed a complaint after
the incident.” When reached for
comment, the Office of Residential
Life reiterated this point. He
retained his position as an RA.
Thirteen years ago, this incident

likely wouldn’t have been viewed
as a Title IX issue. Since then, college
campuses have been held more
accountable for sexual assaults
because of increased media attention,
the White House has spoken out and
Northwestern has updated its sexual
assault policies and trial procedures.
But does this mean Northwestern
students are better protected than
they were before?
TITLE IX’S BEGINNINGS
For many years, there was
a misconception that Title IX
primarily
protected
athletes.
In reality, the inspiration for
Title IX had nothing to do with
sports. It all began in 1969 with
a recommendation from Bernice
Sandler, who was denied a position
at the University of Maryland
after receiving her doctorate there

winter 2015 | 43

in Counseling and Personnel
Services. When she asked why she
was not considered for any of the
seven openings in the department,
a male faculty member told her,
“Let’s face it. You come on too
strong for a woman.”
Often called the “Godmother of
Title IX,” Sandler recommended
that Congress hold a hearing on sex
discrimination in education. In 1970,
they did. Sandler testified before
the congressional committee about
discrimination against women in
higher education, and this hearing
led to the creation of Title IX.
Signed into law by Richard
Nixon in June 1972, Title IX ensures,
“No person in the United States
shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded
from participation in, be denied
the benefits of, or be subjected to
discrimination under any education
program or activity receiving
federal financial assistance.”
The law addresses 10 areas:
access to higher education,
career education, education for
pregnant and parenting students,
employment, athletics, learning
environment, math and science,
standardized testing, technology
and sexual harassment.
In the early days of Title IX at
Northwestern, the law was viewed
as assurance that women would
receive equal treatment in sports.
University President Robert Strotz
appointed an Ad Hoc Committee
on Intercollegiate Sports in 1974
to study the status of women’s
sports on campus and to assess
whether Northwestern complied
with Title IX. Varsity status became
open to women in 1975, and by
September 1976 the Women’s
Athletic Department offered its first
scholarships to student-athletes.
Despite these advances, hostility
toward women athletes persisted.
An unnamed female basketball
player complained of “little things”
in a January 1976 article in The Daily
Northwestern. “Every day before
practice we’re issued a roll of pants,
a shirt, socks, a towel and a jock
strap,” she says. “We tried using
them (the jockstraps) as headbands,
but they fell off.”
In the last few years, the law
has attracted attention in a sexual
assault context. Title IX gives
sexual assault victims an extra
layer of protection—while it might
be easy for a university to dismiss a
college student filing a complaint,
it’s almost impossible to ignore a
Title IX lawsuit.
“It adds real legal responsibility
for schools to do something,”
says says Communication senior

44 | northbynorthwestern.com

Olivia Seligman, Sexual Health and
Assault Peer Education (SHAPE)
communications director. “So it’s
not just like, ‘Do the right thing.’ It’s
sort of like, ‘You have to do this.’”
Sexual harassment was not even
considered sex discrimination until
Alexander v. Yale in 1980, when five
Yale College students and alumni
used Title IX for charges of sexual
harassment against the university.
Though the women lost the case
on technical grounds, the lawsuit
accomplished its goals. Yale instituted
a complaint procedure for victims of
sexual harassment, and the court
determined that sexual harassment
counted as sex discrimination.
Flash forward 35 years, and Title
IX is almost synonymous with legal

the University under Title IX in
February 2014, alleging that former
philosophy professor Peter Ludlow
sexually assaulted her in 2012.
WHAT HAS
NORTHWESTERN DONE?
A group of students, wearing
tape on their mouths and carrying
signs with phrases like “Protect us,
not our reputation” and “We will
not be silenced,” protested Ludlow’s
philosophy class by hosting a
sit-in last Spring Quarter. After
the protesters left the class, they
marched to the Rock and eventually
to the Weinberg Dean’s Office. So
what does a university do when it
has an alleged sexual assailant on

“It adds real legal
responsibility for schools
to do something .... So
it’s not just like, ‘Do
the right thing.’ It’s sort
of like, ‘You have to do
this.’”

protection from sexual assault on
college campuses. In 2011, the United
States Department of Education’s
Office of Civil Rights sent out a
“Dear Colleague” letter to university
employees, explaining that Title IX
covers sexual violence. Vox called
2014 the year “college sexual assault
became impossible to ignore.”
Universities like Harvard and
Princeton were found in violation of
Title IX, the White House formed a
task force to protect college students
from sexual assault and Emma
Sulkowicz carried her mattress
around Columbia University to
protest her alleged rapist’s continued
presence at the school. And at
Northwestern, a Medill senior sued

staff and a group of angry students
protesting his class? Ludlow’s class
was cancelled for the remainder of
the quarter, and the Title IX lawsuit
was eventually dismissed.
In the fall, Dean of Students
Todd Adams announced “a new
student conduct process, which
applies in cases alleging sexual
misconduct by students,” according
to an October email from University
President Morton Schapiro. He also
said Northwestern was going to
receive another three-year grant of
$300,000 from the Department of
Justice’s Office of Violence Against
Women. According to the email, the
grant funds education programs
and efforts to engage diverse groups

in sexual violence prevention.
At a mid-January meeting, ASG
announced that the University
will be implementing new Title
IX-related updates. The University
will hire a Title IX investigator, who
will conduct sexual harassment
and sexual violence investigations
and report to Title IX Coordinator
Joan Slavin. For cases that involve
faculty respondents, Slavin has
been working with the Office of
the Provost to design a new faculty
discipline process. The University
is also developing a new online
training process for all faculty, staff
and graduate students concerning
Title IX, the Violence Against
Women Act and sexual harassment.
ASG President Julia Watson
says ASG has been lobbying for
changes like these. She specifically
mentioned training for the Faculty
Committee on Cause, which reviews
and mediates disputes between
members of the Northwestern
faculty and administration.
“If
you’re
deciding
the
outcomes of somebody who’s been
found to be in violation of Title IX,
you want to make sure that people
who are also listening to those
cases actually know Title IX policy,
Northwestern policy, federal and
state policy,” Watson says.
Weinberg senior Jazz Stephens,
an activist involved in the Title IX
at NU movement, says we’ll have to
wait to see how effective the training
is. She says a “five-minute online
module” for professors to complete
wouldn’t help anyone, for example.
Slavin is working to update the
Title IX website with frequently
asked questions. Northwestern also
plans to send out a student campus
climate survey in April. The
White House Task Force to Protect
Students from Sexual Assault is
considering making these climate
surveys a requirement for all
colleges and universities for next
year. Northwestern is ahead of the
game in that respect, Watson says.
“Some colleges and universities
are reporting that they have zero
Title IX allegations,” Watson says.
“That’s obviously just not the case.
It’s completely improbable to say
that some of these colleges and
universities just aren’t having issues
of sexual harassment, sexual assault.
I think these survey results will
actually start to shed light on the real
numbers of what’s going on.”
As far as what’s already been
accomplished, Slavin and a deputy
coordinator provided in-person
Title IX and Violence Against
Women Act training for incoming
graduate and professional students.

This training covers an overview of
consent and Northwestern policies,
bystander intervention and how to
report complaints.
Despite these updates, Director
of Legal Studies Laura Beth Nielsen
says there are still problems
with Title IX hearings, which are
conducted by university officials.
“You have a lot of processes
at the university level that look
something like a criminal process.
The idea is that the person who’s
being accused has certain rights
and that the person who’s doing the
accusing has certain protections,
but the adjudicator ends up being
someone at the university, and they
are not necessarily neutral,” she
says. “In addition to this particular
case, they have all of these
university concerns that are in their
minds, whether they say they are
or not .... The university also has a
lot at stake, so putting an employee
of the university in that position,
while it’s what every university
does, may not be the ideal system
that you want to set up.”
In other words, no matter what
policies or procedures NU enacts,
the system is still inherently flawed.
Stephens says this problematic
system can make survivors hesitant
about coming forward.
“Structures at Northwestern
enable there to be a lot of sexism,
a lot of silencing, a lot of shaming,”
she says.
She also says that without
enforcement, Title IX is useless.
“I actually think [Title IX is]
more a slap in the face to know in
theory you have these protections.
It’s just not being enforced by the
school,” she says. “Yeah, we have
[protections] in theory, on paper
somewhere. Maybe even on the
Internet somewhere. Are we doing
anything about it? No.”
Overall, she says Northwestern
can do better.
“I think [the University is] not
doing as well as it could be, and
considering the resources we have,
that is unacceptable,” Stephens
says. “If we can afford to fill in a
part of the Lakefill to avoid land
taxes, we should be able to better
support survivors.”
Some students have taken action
into their own hands to supplement
the University’s actions. The
Northwestern University College
Feminists annually hosts Take
Back the Night, which aims to
end sexual violence by creating
safe communities and respectful
relationships through awareness
events and initiatives. Men Against
Rape and Sexual Assault (MARS)

gives presentations on sexual
assault, often working with the
Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life.
Members of SHAPE seek to educate
and generate dialogue about health
and sexual assault.
“One of the things Title IX says
is that the school is supposed to
take preventative measures, but
I’ve seen less action in that respect,”
Seligman says. “It’s a lot harder to
say, ‘This is how we handle sexual
assault,’ instead of ‘This is how we
create a culture that prevents that.’”
Members of the College
Feminists say Title IX protections
don’t go far enough, arguing that
sexual assault’s illegality won’t
prevent it from happening.
“Rape is very illegal beyond

groups work together so it’s not the
school versus the students.
“I think the conversations have
to be more ongoing,” Seligman says.
Communication
sophomore
Will Altabef, the public relations
chair for MARS, agrees that
continuing these conversations
after freshman year is important.
He says that while Northwestern
has updated its consent policies and
provided resources like CARE and
the Women’s Center, upperclassmen
need to be made aware of policy
changes and new resources.
“The policies they’re trying to
put out there are good,” Altabef
says. “Unfortunately it’s how do
you get 6,000 older students to read
those policies every year? Because

“If we can afford to fill
in a part of the Lakefill
to avoid land taxes, we
should be able to better
support survivors.”

Title IX, and I’m going to go ahead
and say that most victims of sexual
assault don’t find it comforting
that rape’s illegal,” says College
Feminists President Elizabeth Böhl.
“I don’t think that having Title IX is
going to make survivors feel like,
‘I’m going to be believed now.’
I think it’s useful, and I think its
something we should utilize, but I
don’t think it’s an end-all, be-all.”
“It’s not going to end rape
culture,” Weinberg sophomore
Arielle Zimmerman says.
Seligman
believes
the
disconnect between students and
administration could be one cause
of the problem. She says part of the
solution could be having the two

obviously they’re going to talk to
the freshmen about it every year,
but there’s going to be so many
older students who might not
know what’s changed.”
As far as sexual assault
prevention, the Student Handbook
is progressive in its definitions of
sexual misconduct. The policy on
Sexual Misconduct, Stalking, and
Dating and Domestic Violence,
which was implemented last
January, identifies consent as “the
cornerstone of respectful and
healthy intimate relationships.”
Northwestern’s definition states
emphasizing affirmative consent,
stating that that “consent is present
when
clearly
understandable

words or actions manifest a
knowing and voluntary agreement
to engage in specific sexual or
intimate conduct.”
The handbook also touches on
the incapacitation standard, stating
consent cannot be given when
a person is drunk, unconscious,
asleep or “otherwise unaware that
the sexual activity is occurring.”
Northwestern’s sexual misconduct
policy also says anyone who
engages in sexual activity must be
aware of the other person’s level
of intoxication. In other words,
saying, “I didn’t realize how drunk
she was” isn’t an excuse.
But what about ordinary students
who aren’t involved in sexual
assault awareness groups? Stephens
says Northwestern students are
reactionary. She describes the campus
atmosphere as possessing an “allencompassing inertia.”
“Incidents happen, students rise
up and protest, there’s kind of some
small gesture toward making the
school a better place or safer place
for some group of students, and then
very little is actually done at the end
of say, five, 10 years,” she says.
She says this type of activism
creates a demand for narratives—
students who get involved need to
hear a compelling story first.
“We demand to hear these kind
of empathy-evoking, sympathyevoking stories that are supposed
to kind of fuel us to be outraged,”
she says. “That’s almost how we’re
taught to care .... You want to hear
that some person walked into
some frat and had this horrible
experience, and how it affected
her and how it impacted her time
at Northwestern, and preferably
there would be some sort of a
gesture toward a happy ending….
But it can’t be like, ‘I don’t think
that was my fault at all, and I’m
fine.’ We don’t want to hear that.
We want to hear the struggle, the
sadness, the impact.”
Stephens says we need to
start moving forward and having
conversations—conversations in
which the University needs to be
present and vocal.
“I wish we were talking about
more
radical
conversations.
I’m so tired of having the same
[conversation], ‘Yes, let’s combat
sexual violence,’” she says. “Can
that just be a given already? Can
we move onto the next step?”
Until then, Stephens says, “We’re
not going anywhere new .... There
needs to be a will to change.”

winter 2015 | 45

3.8 MILLION HIT

WONDER
(AND COUNTING)

JUN SUNG AHN’S YOUTUBE FAME PLAYS
SECOND FIDDLE TO LOFTIER AMBITIONS.

I

by Tyler Daswick

Photos by Michael Nowakowski

‘m bad with people.”
What was that?
Jun Sung Ahn, the
Communication
senior with the mad
violin
skills
and
540,000
YouTube
subscribers
hadn’t
said that, had he? I’m
not sure what to say. I
try to play it off.
Ahn releases a
nervous laugh. “Not to
be rude, but honestly, right now, this
situation for me is kind of awkward.”
Yeesh. This isn’t how I expected
the interview to go, but then again,
Jun Sung Ahn is anything but what
you might expect.

“PLAY LOUDER I CAN’T HEAR
ENOUGH OF THE BEAUTIFUL
INSTRUMENT THAT IS JUN
CURRY’s VIOLIN PLAY SO LOUD
MY FEELS EXPLODE FROM THE
MEANINGFUL EMOTION FILLED
MUSIC PLAY SOMETHING IM
GIVING UP ON YOU”
- J Vancil
“Most people on YouTube, they
don’t really know that much,” he
says. “If they see me play violin
they’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, he’s the
best violinist in the world,’ because
they don’t know anyone else.”
This man is more than just
the violin. Even when he came
to Northwestern as a budding
Internet star, Ahn’s focus was
never solely on YouTube. In fact, his
RTVF major was his first priority.
“I have more passion for film,”
he says. “In high school I would
practice the violin like five hours
every single day. It was a really
big deal for me, but I decided to do
film .... My dream, freshman year
[at Northwestern], was to be a film
director. That was it.”
Yet, even with YouTube securely
on the secondhand shelf, Ahn saw
how his filmmaking passions
could be put on display via his
violin playing. Today, his channel
functions almost as a resume.
“Everything I do, every project
I make, contributes to my film
career,” he says. “Gaining more
subscribers through my videos
is like gaining more audience. If I
didn’t have a YouTube channel, it
would be hard to get a hundred
people to watch it, but [now] it
would be super easy for me to get

You probably think you know
Jun Sung Ahn, or JuNCurryAhn,
as he is referred to online. This
story has been told before—you
might say you’ve heard this song
and dance—and at this point you
might be thinking there isn’t much
else to know about Northwestern’s
resident YouTube star. Well, if you
ask him, it’s not that simple. He’s
not that simple.
“Most people on YouTube, they
think I’m just this nice, quiet, nerdy
Asian kid who plays violin. That’s
their image,” Ahn says. “I don’t
think I fit that image anymore.”
The misconceptions begin,
perhaps, with Ahn’s level of talent.
Indeed, he is a fine artist and a
terrific musician, but comments
like this one from his cover of A
Great Big World’s “Say Something”
tend to bother him, and they aren’t
uncommon:

46 | northbynorthwestern.com

a hundred people to watch it right
away, so that’s a big advantage.”
Even with a thousandsstrong audience ready to jump
on everything he posts, however,
Ahn is committed to making each
upload unique and original.
“I want to build my YouTube
channel as a portfolio,” he says.
“Instead of pumping out videos
every week, like setting up a tripod
in my room and doing a really
simple cover, I take every single
video that I upload as a big project
of mine, with a new style and stuff
like that. Every video that I do has
a cinematic quality to it.”
There’s evidence of that across
his channel. His cover of Seoulbased boy band EXO’s “Growl”
cuts together to look like one
continuous shot. His “Shake It
Off” cover brings in a multitude
of Northwestern student groups.
His rendition of PSY’s “Gangnam
Style” is a clever split-screen onetake. Ahn indeed expands his
repertoire with every upload, but
the variety comes with a ton of
work. He usually has to cram the
entire process into one weekend.
“Most of my videos are kind of
spontaneous,” he says. He describes
how he often picks a song, practices
and records it that same day, and
then conceives of and records the
video production the following day.
“I never really plan that much. It just
kind of comes, right?”
Communication senior Kevin
Kim, who does videography for
many of Ahn’s videos, says the
whole process is very autonomous.
“I’m there to help him create, but

he’s doing most of it on his own,”
he says. “It’s kind of cool. It’s almost
a one-man process for him. It’s a lot
to do. I respect him for that.”
This intense care seems to have
paid off for the Internet star. Ahn’s
channel is growing at a steady rate.
He broke the 500,000-subscriber
mark just a few weeks into this
past Fall Quarter, and during his
senior year he’s added more than
50,000 subscribers and racked up
more than 7 million individual
views. His most popular video, a
cover of “Let It Go,” has more than
3.8 million views, and his videos
garner an average of about 587,000
hits apiece. He’s crushing it.
But this success comes with a
plan. It’s all preparation for the future.
“After I graduate, I think
I’m going to full-time work on
YouTube,” he says. “Right now,
because of school, I haven’t been
able to really achieve what I’ve
wanted to do on YouTube, videowise. I just didn’t have the time and
resources. But once I graduate I’m
definitely going to have more time.”
He goes on. “Short-term goals: I
just want to continue my YouTube.
Build it up a little more, build my
audience more, and then start
incorporating my own film work
into the channel, because there’s
already viewers. I think I’m going
to cross over at some point.”
With this crossover, however,
might come a cold reality: Jun
Sung Ahn might have to leave
YouTube. The website’s landscape
is changing. Copyright restrictions
are more stringent than ever, and
the covers that have been Ahn’s

winter 2015 | 47

of ‘semi-fame’ status is meeting
people that know me before
[they meet me], and they have
preconceived notions of me,” he
says. “My junior year, the people
that I met, most of them already
knew me when I first got to meet
them. A lot of them came up to
me and told me, ‘Wow, you’re a
lot different than what I thought
you’d be.’ A lot of people thought I
was super cocky, and they thought
YouTube was my entire life. That’s
something I struggled with a lot in
college.”
This echoes the idea of Ahn
carrying this image with him, one
of the nice, quiet, nerdy Asian kid.
The image conjures comments
like Vesko Varbanov’s on his “I
Dreamed A Dream” cover:
“OMG I have a total crush on Jun
Sung... he’s so sweeeet and so
talented. AWESOME!!!”
- Vesko Varbanov
Or this one from Meaghanne
Mack on his rendition of Miley
Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball”:

HOT ‘AHN’D COLD
Ahn recounts the frigid shoot of the most
popular video on his YouTube channel.
Ask Jun Sung Ahn what word would
define his Northwestern experience,
and he’d say, “Frozen.” Makes sense. It’s
the most-viewed video on his YouTube
channel, with over 3.8 million hits, but
Ahn cites the filmmaking process as
being particularly memorable.
“We wanted to film at the Lakefill
for the entire video. That was the
second-coldest day that winter. Kevin
Kim—he filmed for me—he pretty
much died. My violin cracked because
it was too cold, and I actually got
frostbite on my hand. We stopped
halfway through, took refuge in
Norris, and then took it in the ice
rink afterwards. [Kim] was shaking so
much with the camera, which is why
there’s bits of Frozen cut into it. No
one knows that! People think it was
intentional.”
Kim calls the shoot a “pretty wack
experience.”
“We couldn’t wear gloves. Our
hands were freezing,” Kim says. “It was
bitter cold. It was not a fun experience,
I have to say.”

48 | northbynorthwestern.com

Stills from his video “Disney’s
Frozen ‘Let It Go’”

bread and butter for the past four
years are no longer bringing in
money.
“YouTube’s not so free anymore,”
he says. “It’s not for everyone
anymore. The bar just keeps getting
higher and higher. Five years ago, it
was cell phone videos, but now it’s
heavy production stuff.”
That means, of course, that the
man who started with one camera
and one take needs to go bigger.
Ahn describes a video idea he has
where he squares off in a violin duel
against another musician. The two
play back and forth, but instead
of just a song emerging from their
instruments, they’re able to fire
lasers at each other. Graphics, visual
effects—these are what Ahn wants
to do now.
“If that’s done well, it’s going to
go viral,” he says. “So I kind of want
to start doing that, but at the same
time I kind of want to stay at my
roots. I’m in a dilemma right now.
You caught me at a struggle-time.”
Hold on a second. A struggletime? Is that a thing when you’re
an Internet star? It seems to be
so, but it also seems to go beyond
the crossroads between YouTube
and film. This struggle-time has
extended into Ahn’s personal life,
affecting his relationships at NU.
“One thing that I don’t really
like about YouTube and this kind

“Anyone else get the feels when
he looks straight at the camera?
Like he is sharing his emotions
with us through the screen??”
- Meaghanne Mack
This is the image that Jun Sung
Ahn carries with him. This is the
image that he’s trying to replace.
“I’m 10 times weirder than
[people on YouTube] think I am,”
he says. “There’s an expression in
Korean, ‘You’re craziness.’ I’m just
craziness.”
Ahn lists his fandoms as
evidence of his craziness.
“I’m a huge [Lord of the Rings]
fan. That’s the number-one movie
in my life,” Ahn says. “I love Pillow
Pets—have a crap ton of them at my
house. I don’t know, I’m just weird.”
But that’s not all that troubles
Jun Sung Ahn. Beyond his selfprescribed weirdness, the YouTube
star claims that, well, he’s sort of
awkward.
“Actually, though,” he says.
“An awkward, sometimes nerdy,
Korean Asian kid who can play the
violin pretty well.”
He recalls an instance from
one of his classes just a week
earlier. “In my econ class last week,
someone came up to me and asked
me for a signature, and asked me
for a picture, but that was pretty
awkward,” he says. “That was in
front of all my friends, and they
were just laughing.”

Ahn’s world is one of constant
recognition and catching up. Most
encounters he has with peers
put him at a disadvantage: He
doesn’t know much about them,
but they know a ton about him.
He has to gain ground, reach that
same level of familiarity and pull
himself up to that social plane. The
Northwestern RTVF community
posed itself as a particularly
challenging environment.
“Now, I look back. I look at my
senior class. I know everyone—kind
of—but I’m definitely not in the ‘in
group’ with the film majors, when
I wish I was,” Ahn says. “I’m either
doing school, dancing or YouTube,
and film didn’t have a place in
there. It’s just so time-consuming.
You decide to do one set and it’s
two weekends out of your quarter.”
He hesitates. “I know if I had spent
more time with them I would’ve
definitely learned a lot.”
Perhaps the situation was
almost unfair to Ahn. When he
came to Northwestern from New
Jersey, his environment was one of
extreme novelty. He wasn’t used to
being independent. He wasn’t used
to doing things alone.
“Coming here, I was just
thrown,” he says. “At home, I think
I depended on my family quite a
lot. I think it’s just my personality.

I didn’t know what to do. I had to
struggle through everything on
my own. Even film, I didn’t have
time to build that community,
so even going through my major
it was kind of a struggle. I went
to classes, I kind of knew people
there, but I couldn’t really feel
comfortable in that home, so I just
had to crawl through everything.”
At this point, it seems natural
to recall how he stopped this
interview, how he confessed that
he’s struggling, how he says he’s
bad with people.
This comment hangs briefly.
But then something in Ahn’s face
seems to shift. He reconsiders. He
speaks again.
“But, freshman year, if this
happened, I probably would’ve
said about one-fourth of what I
said today .... I think even though I
wasn’t at the status I am right now,
I think it got to my head a little
more back then. I wasn’t being
openly arrogant about something,
but I would definitely watch what
I say. I would be more careful—
not myself—which is why I think
it made it a little harder for me to
really open up and have people get
to know me.”
The truth is, Ahn feels like most
of his encounters at Northwestern
involved himself having to reach

through a screen. That was
challenging for him, but it also
indicates a lack of effort from the
other side. Most of his audience
just holds him at arm’s length, but
reaching who this man is requires
delving past the glossy, silverscreened surface. For those who
do, a different person emerges.
“When I first started working
with him, he wasn’t too big, as he
is now,” said Kim. “I feel like I’ve
worked with him for so long that
I don’t have the conceptions that
most people have of him.”
Even Ahn notices when people
treat him differently, when people
treat him, well, normally.
“My friends back home, they
love making fun of my YouTube
channel,” he says. “On some of my
videos, if you look closely, there’s
usually a stream of comments at
one point where it’s all my high
school friends just saying crap
about me.” He laughs.
Now, as a senior, the man who
says he had to “crawl through
everything” can look back and take
it all in, from the very first video
the summer before his freshman
year, all the way to filming his
“Shake It Off” cover with a range
of NU student groups. Ahn sees
that shy, uncomfortable person he
was, and he considers his arc. He

recalls something his parents told
him when he was just a kid.
“You have to leave an impact,
right? My parents always stressed
this, that once I graduate, I can’t just
be another person who graduated.
They said that to me when I was
pretty young,” he says. “That
really hit me. That was my biggest
stress and paranoia when I came
to college was, ‘How am I going to
leave my impact here?’ I just always
want to know: Did I do a good job?
Did I leave an impact? Did I leave a
footprint at Northwestern? I don’t
know. That’s just a theoretical
question.”
There’s silence for a while.
“Do you know how you would
answer it?” I ask.
“No. That’s the thing. That’s a
question I just want to throw out
there. I always ask myself that, and
I don’t know if I did or not.”
Another stretch of silence. Ahn
looks down and away.
“What would be your ideal
answer?”
Jun Sung Ahn looks up again.
This time, his gaze holds firm. This
time, he speaks with confidence.
“I did enough. That would be
my best answer, the answer I want
to give.”

AHN’S BIGGEST FAN
After opening a surprise gift, Ahn finds a
treasure trove of personalized items.
“Well, surprisingly I haven’t gotten
super weird, like creepy stuff. But, the
best gift I’ve gotten was on my birthday.
“I got this giant box from
Singapore, and I was like ‘What is this?’
but then I read the name, and I know
that name because she posts on every
single thing on my Facebook, right?
Likes everything. Everything I tweet
is retweeted in ten seconds. I could
safely say she was my number one fan,
right? And she sent me this box.
“First of all, there were two giant

stuffed animals, really nice. A Pillow Pet
because I like Pillow Pets. A couple
t-shirts—custom-designed t-shirts—
and there was an Armani watch.
“And then this photo book, that
showed the life span of my YouTube,
beginning to end. And it was so wellmade. The beginning was a play button,
right? Like, ‘click play to begin,’ and flip
over and it was the first video, and she
just commented what she thought on
that day. Almost every single video—all in
that book. That was shocking.”

Find all of Jun Sung Ahn’s work at
www.juncurryahn.com or www.youtube.com/user/JuNCurryAhn

winter 2015 | 49

50 | northbynorthwestern.com

HANGOVER

HEAD OUT

THE SHERIDAN SHUFFLE:
WHAT NORTHWESTERN
MUSICIANS HAVE ON
THEIR PLAYLISTS
by Sofia Rada

STUDENT MUSICIANS PLAY all kinds of music, but their artistic
styles donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always align with their listening preferences. The
playlists of these musical Wildcats vary as much as their skillsets.
continued

Illustration by VASILIKI VALKANAS
Photo by SEAN MAGNER

winter 2015 | 51

HANGOVER

Alyssa Giannetti

Michael Martinez

Jon Kemp

Voice major, aspiring opera
singer and music teacher,
member of the a capella group
THUNK

DJ at Streetbeat and founder of
Don’t Only Just Observe (DOJO),
an organization that looks to
foster the hip-hop community at
Northwestern and abroad

Drummer for the Northwestern
marching band and member of
Purple Band

Favorite songs:
1.

“Suit and Tie”
Justin Timberlake

2.

“Colder Weather”
Zac Brown Band

3.

“Drunk in Love”
Beyoncé

“When people don’t like
Beyoncé, we can’t be friends.
It’s not even possible. Beyoncé
always.”

52 | northbynorthwestern.com

McCormick sophomore
Michael Martinez loves the
song “One More Time” by
Daft Punk. It was the song
playing on radio z100 when
he was a kid in a car driving
through
Times
Square.
Whenever he hears the song,
the memory of those city
lights and signs comes back to
him.

Favorite songs:
1.

“Achilles Last Stand”
The Killers

2.

“Adorn”
Miguel

3.

“Family Business”
Kanye West

“I have a deep love for all
things hip-hop and R&B.
These music styles were very
prominent in the New York City
metro area, which is around
where I grew up.”

SESP sophomore Jon
Kemp still remembers how
the crowd erupted behind
him when he was conducting
his high school marching band
and it reached the climax of
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
Music has always been
“freeing” for Kemp. And if
he’s listening to it, it’s more
likely to be indie, alternative
rock or hip-hop.

Favorite songs:
1.

“All These Things
That I’ve Done”
The Killers

2.

“Montezuma”
Fleet Foxes

3.

“Isaac”
Bear’s Den

“I really like “All These Things
That I’ve Done” because the
lyrics are intentionally vague
enough that they can be easily
applicable to a lot of people
and situations, but it also
speaks about the difficulty and
struggle of trying to make your
own way in life.”

Photos by Jeremy Gaines and Sean Magner

For Bienen junior Alyssa
Gianetti, getting the lead
role in The Phantom of the
Opera her senior year of
high school changed her
plan of becoming a college
swimmer. Nowadays, she’s
prepping for her role as Rose
in the upcoming production of
Ruddigore. She mostly leaves
opera in the classroom and
on stage, though, listening to
anything from country to R&B
on her own time.

Whether it’s a few spirals alongside notes on Waterloo, a school of goldfish swimming toward your supply and
demand graph or a snake digesting an elephant in a free energy diagram, doodles can spice up any page of lecture
notes. But what if those stick-people were more than just college-ruled scribbles?

A RTI ST : A IDA N M A NA L IG O D

B IE N E N SO PH O M O R E

Professor’s take:
“They’re happening within the text themselves. So the images
are starting to pop up sort of in the middles of the page.
I kinda like that one with the snake eating the elephant. I
have no idea what’s happening above or below it but there’s
something kinda compelling about that.”

A RTI ST : M AR IS S A HA S TING S

WE IN B E RG SO P H O M O R E

Professor’s take:
“It’s interesting since they’re drawn from various points
of view. You’ve got the bird’s eye view of the pizza
you’ve got the more straight-on view of some of the
other elements. The looseness with which these are
drawn is compelling.”

ART I ST : KAT Y VI N ES

W E I NB E R G S O P H O M ORE

Professor’s take:
“A lot of them are really figurative, instead of being more
shapes or patterns. Obviously she’s interested in people and
faces and expressions. I think some people tend to shy away
from drawing faces while other people are really drawn to
that. They’re so familiar with what a face should look like.”

ART I ST : J ORDAN H ARRI SON

M E D I L L S OP H OMORE

Professor’s take:
“That balloon is responding to the hole in the paper or
somehow referring to that volume. That margin is acting
as a starting point of a frame for the doodles that are
happening. Usually if people are considered doodling
while some other activity is taking place, a lot of times it
seems like they are inspired by something that is going on
physically on the page.”
winter 2015 | 53

KITTIE COOPER
Bienen sophomore
Classical Guitar Performance Major
General Music Education Major
English Minor

54 | northbynorthwestern.com

Photos by JEREMY GAINES AND
MICHAEL NOWAKOWSKI
Art by ALEX LORDAHL

PAUL SALAMANCA
Weinberg freshman
Mathematics Major

winter 2015 | 55

HANGOVER

ENCYCLO-TEA-DIA TAPIOCA
Tapioca-filled Taiwanese drinks not your area of exper-teas? No problem. BY LUCY
We’ve compiled a glossary of bubble tea-related drinks and toppings.
WANG

SMOOTHIES/SLUSHES/FREEZES — Ice-blended drinks that are
sweeter than teas and come in fruity or chocolatey flavors.
TEA — Watery, milky and sweet, with options ranging from classics like black
and green to more sophisticated options like golden oolong, a traditional Chinese
tea, matcha, a sweet, powdered green tea and white gourd, a Southeast Asian fruit
tea. Teas can be served both hot and cold.
TAPIOCA/BOBA/BUBBLES/PEARLS —

Chewy
spheres with a faint, sugary aftertaste. They’re lumpy but smooth,
springy but soft, gooey but sleek. Nevermind. There are no words that
do tapioca justice.

POPPING BOBA — Juice-filled spheres
that burst when chewed. Think Fruit Gushers, but
colder and not as valuable to trade and barter at
recess.
MINI PEARLS —

rom late nights at the Deuce to just getting across town, Uber has
been a lifeline for Northwestern students. Unsurprisingly, a few
oddball stories get thrown in the batch of Uber requests.

The following transcripts have been edited for length and clarity.

NEW TO THE CITY

As told by William Xiao, McCormick sophomore

I’M COMING BACK to campus after
break. The thing is, Uber can’t technically
pick up at the airport, so I set the pin a
little ways off and call the driver to come.
He says, “Oh yeah, I’ll be right there,” but
he keeps trying to go to the address on the
pin, and I keep trying to explain to him that
I’m at the airport and he can pick me up at
Terminal 2.
Finally, 45 minutes after I first call the
ride, he shows up at O’Hare Terminal
2. I get in the car and he’s apologizing
profusely: “I’m so sorry. I’ve only been in
Chicago three days.”
O’Hare has these rumble strips. Every
time he goes over them, he brakes. I try
to explain to him that it’s not your car,
just these strips on the ground. I think
he understands me, but then we go over
another one and he does the same thing.
On the highway, he gets a phone call
and says, “Oh, let me take this.” We are in
an exit-only lane, and he mistakenly takes
the exit. Once he realizes that, he decides
we need to get back on the expressway.
Then he just goes for it. He just crosses [the
road over the white cross-hatch marks] and
we’re back on the highway, but it’s still an
exit-only lane and he’s still on the phone.
He takes the next exit also and does the
same maneuver. Eventually we get off the
highway and I’m feeling a little better.
We finally get back on campus, but I
live all the way up north. Instead of having
him drive more, I tell him to drop me in the
Allison parking lot. In the end, I sort of feel
bad for the guy and end up giving him four
stars. Maybe he’ll get better.

THE MYSTERY DRIVER

As told by Gina Lupica, Communication sophomore

It’s very early, and I need
to get home from north
campus. I only need to go a
couple blocks, but because
I’m not dressed properly, I
call an Uber.
My boyfriend and I
go outside to the Sargent
parking lot. I see an
unmarked car, and he’s just
waiting there. It looks like
he’s waiting for someone,
so I open the back door. I
say, “Hi, are you the Uber?”
He just mumbles, “Yes,” so I
get in, my boyfriend gets in,
and then we shut the door
and drive two minutes. We
get out and I say, “Thank

you so much.” He sits there
for a minute, but I just close
the door and go inside the
house.
Then as soon as I go
inside, I get a phone call from
an unknown number.
I pick it up and it’s the real
Uber driver saying, “Okay,
I’m here. Where are you?” I
say, “Oh my god, I already
got in a car. I thought it was
you.”
He freaks out at me and
starts yelling, “I drove all the
way up here. Why did you
get into another car? I’m here.
I’m going to drive around
and charge you money

because you wasted my
time. You wasted gas.” I say,
“Well, I’m sorry there was
a car there and you weren’t
there and he was. I’m sorry.
It was a mistake, but fine, go
ahead and charge me if you
want to do that.”
So I hang up and I get a
receipt five minutes later.
He circles the parking lot
twice. It’s a $2 charge for
this Uber drive I never got.
Then I realize that the other
guy who took me home had
no way of charging me, so
that ride was technically
free. I don’t know who the
mysterious Uber driver was.

Heading to Northwestern,
we exit out of Midway but then
all of a sudden, he runs over
a median or something. I’m
in the back seat on my phone
just chilling and then all you
hear is “blihhhhh, boom,” like
something has hit our car. The
right bumper of our car is dented
in and skidding against the road.

We’re on the South Side
of Chicago. He pulls off to a
little neighborhood, and I just
don’t feel safe at all. He spends
20 minutes fixing the car and
I don’t even know what he’s
doing. I look outside. There’s
nothing he can do to fix it. He’s
just touching it, trying to make
the bumper go up.

Even though the car is still
broken, we get back on the
highway. Everything’s going
fine, but all of a sudden you
hear that sound again, the
“blihhhhh.” This time we pull
over to the right shoulder of the
highway and then he tries to fix
the bumper. I say, “Hey, I’m just
gonna get a new taxi.” He says,

“Alright, fine, fine. I’ll get you
a new taxi.” After calling the
new taxi, we have to wait there
for like 15 minutes on the right
shoulder of the highway. Once
the other taxi comes up, I get
in. The new taxi driver drives
me away at a decent speed and
doesn’t try to charge me extra.
It’s perfect.
winter 2015 | 57